How Robbie Wade had the luck of the Irish for the Cap Tex Triathlon

After the BalancePoint™ session, Robbie stands next to the KGS Setup Bike. Photo: Kevin G Saunders

While KGS custom triathlon bicycles provide huge improvements in performance for triathletes, few triathletes come investigate. Most either follow what is on Slowtwitch or are so risk averse that it could take over a year before they would consider even having their positions checked, much less consider a change. When pro triathlete Robbie Wade had a problem that we could potentially help him with, we jumped at the chance.

Here is what I awoke to yesterday morning on Facebook:

Kevin,
Good morning to you. My name is Robbie Wade and I’m an Irishman that just moved to San Antonio via DC. I race Pro Triathlon and this weekend I’m racing at Cap Tex in Austin. Long story short my bike shipment back from Columbia Tri on Sunday got messed up and I need to somehow get a TT bike for Mon as it won’t be here until Tue. A long shot but is there any chance you have a demo/test bike available to borrow. I’m 5:9 and ride a 53 Dolan Aria and a 54 Trek road. It would be awesome if you could help me on anyway I would do anything to return the favor, promational stuff, tell the world about you company, clean your bikes, anything!

Thanks, for taking the time to read this crazy request.
Robbie

Robbie in the 8 minute time trial. Bottom of pedal stroke. Photo: Kevin G Saunders

I contacted Robbie and even though we have a Parlee TT in the studio, it is my size and I am 5’10″. Robbie agreed to get on the setup bike and go through our BalancePoint™ positioning so we could see if I could make the bike fit.

The story is interesting. Robbie came to triathlon from running, so he just got on a bike  and rode it, like so many triathletes do. Since this is his first year as a pro, he doesn’t have the big sponsorships the major pros do, and races on the Snapple Triathlon Team.

When we went through the process of finding exactly where he balances on the bike, the results were amazing. All his muscle groups were now working together, not against each other. He could stay in the aero position comfortably and hold his head up so his aero helmet stays in the right place. He never felt anything like it.

Robbie is relaxed and focused, and most of all, comfortable while at race pace. Photo: Kevin G Saunders

We did an 8 minute time trial to see if Robbie could hold the position comfortably. The KGS Setup Bike has a Tacx Fortius trainer attached to it so we can measure power and show it graphically on the flat screen monitor. It can be programmed so we set it for 8 minutes with a 1% uphill grade.

The first minute into the effort, Robbie had some tension in his neck, so we raised the handlebars about 10 mm. Round 2 started and as you can see from the photo, his power remained steady at 391 watts. The cool thing was, he was carrying on a conversation with me at the time!

Now we found his position and copied down the data and as luck would have it, I could barely get the Parlee to work. It didn’t look very good, but at least Robbie has a bike to do the Cap Tex Triathlon on Memorial Day.

The Tacx Fortius Power Readout from Robbie's Time Trial. Photo: Kevin G Saunders

He is thrilled and I am confident that he will have an excellent race.

The next installment will be a race report.

Tagged as: Balance point, BalancePoint, Ironman, KGS Bikes, Parlee, positioning, professional triathlete, Robbie Wade, tri bike, Triathlon, triathlon bike