- So we're here in Waterloo, Wisconsin
at Trek Factory headquarters
for their Trek CXC cup weekend.
It's a big cyclo cross festival,
they've got tons of racing
going on, from little kids
all the way up to the World Cup.
It's going to be a good weekend.
In the pits though,
there's a lot of new tech
that I want to check out,
give you guys the scoop on.
(slow music)
("Reveille")
Okay so I'm here with
Morgan from Challenge tires
and we saw you in the
pits and we had to ask,
'cause you had a couple of backpacks on
and I knew there had to be
something cool in there.
Can you tell us about what you have?
- Well you made me dig
it out, and well this is
gravel stuff, that's a cross race.
- Yes.
- But gravel, of course, is an evolution
of the cycle cross, and
everything we learned in cross,
now we're going to carry to gravel.
And the beauty of it is that gravel,
you get to play with all the sizes.
So we have the first tubeless tubulars.
Handmade construction, this
is the Strada Bianca 36.
And so the tubeless tubular allows you,
it's the first tubular that
allows you to get a cut
and plug the tire.
And so we have fused this
very light, latex inner tube
to the wall of the tubular,
so if you do happen to get,
in the flint hills of Kansas,
and the sealant--
- It's too big.
- It's too big for the
sealant, you just plug it
and ride it home.
- Keep going.
- And then off you go and--
- That's going to be music
to the ears of the riders
that are out there with big tires
but they obviously want
this high-end ride quality
from a tubular.
But to be able to patch it like that
I think is going to be well received.
- This is the cats meow,
this is the, has to be.
- So great.
Do you think that we're
going to see this technology
trickle down to the cyclo-cross tires?
- Well we actually made a
batch a couple years ago
bu they just didn't see,
'cause you're going around
and you can ride a flat
if you get to the pit,
and then change it out.
And there's just a little,
little loss of suppleness
that the cross people
just have to have that.
- I know.
- The ultimate, the ultimate, you know.
- I know.
- And the pit's right there, so.
- Well thank you so much
for showing us this,
it looks really nice and yeah
thank you again for your time.
- Thank you.
(slow music)
- More cool tech from the
pits here at the CXC cup.
Mike Barry, mechanic for
Cannondalecyclo-crossworld.com,
talk to us about these pressure guns
that you guys are using.
- So these are Craftsmen pressure guns,
we use all the same one.
We assign them to different riders.
We don't necessarily
need to worry too much
about whether the pressure
is exactly accurate or not,
as long as every rider uses
the proper gun, 25 pounds.
Whether it's 25 pounds in
this gun, is always the same.
- I got it.
Yeah 'cause that's why you guys each,
Kaitlin Keough has her own gun.
Stephen Hyde, and Curtis
White, they have their own gun.
The other riders, you guys
have other riders on the team
and on your development team.
- Yup, that all use a particular gun
every time they go to use it.
- I love it, and so this originally,
it was designed to be
something that was used
out on the road with your car tire.
- Automotive, it was designed
for straighter valves
and it was designed
for balls and footballs
and things like that.
- Yeah, and you have
a lot of the pro teams
re-engineer these guns to be
able to put a Presta valve
on them and then be able to
fill these tires up super quick.
- Yeah absolutely, and it's accurate,
the digital gauge is great,
you don't have to deal with the dial,
and they do tenths of a pound.
- Yeah exactly, and you
don't need to worry,
'cause again, it's not
about if it's 25 pounds
on this one, just the
most important thing is
that it's the same every
single time on that gun.
- If that's what you think 25 pounds is,
that's what we want to make sure.
- As a former pro-rider,
I could appreciate
that we use the same
gun every single time.
Yeah cool all right,
well thank you so much.
- Thank you.
(slow music)
- We're over at the Sram
booth and I ran into Dan.
Dan, tell us about what's
going on with these cranks,
this is unique because you
guys have a lot of athletes
running one by systems with a power meter
and it's different than your road set up.
- Sure with eTap AXS,
traditionally when you
have a red crank set
the chain ring is all machined
out of one piece, aluminum.
So with cross, typically
it's the 1x set up,
so every crank bolt force
in red is ready to go
with power or without.
So this crank here we're
showin single chain ring
without a cork power meter.
If you want to run power,
all you do Is grab a spider
run a four bolt chain ring, go 1x or 2x
and it's all power metering
integrated into it.
- Wow, that is, that is
really cool and I think,
I think for people that are out there,
with a 2x want to go to a 1x,
there able to do that as well.
- It's super easy eight
bolts and it gets you there.
- Ready, thank you.
- Thank you.
- [Narrator] So I'm here
with John at Shimano
and we're looking at
the new GRX group set.
This is new for you guys can
you tell me a little about
what's going on here
and, and in particular,
I'm really interested in
these buttons that shift
on each side of the top.
- Yeah, so Shimano wanted
to release a gravel specific
group set, so something
a little bit more robust
for gravel cycle cross use.
So a nice feature are those
buttons right here one top
just to get you another
position to shift in.
(relaxing music)
So it's just a nice comfortable place
you can use your thumbs to go up or down
that can set however, however you like.
- Cool, all right well
thank you, thank you
so much for showin us.
- Yeah, yeah thank you for comin by.
- All right so we're continuing
to look at cool stuff
that we've seen here at the Trek CXC cup
and I found Andrew, Andrew tell us
what the heck is going on with these.
- Yeah so this is a PVC bike
holder that we have here
and the idea is to be
able to fit four bikes
in the back of our van
here that which we use
as our team vehicle.
In order to keep everything
organized and upright,
and clean and safe, and
to maximize the storage
space in the back of our small van.
- Yeah I think it's pretty cool,
if I'm thinking about it
when I use to drive around
in my old school Caprice,
we used to just have to
ram those bikes in there and unfortunately
they would chip up the paint
and get some things messed up.
This is a pretty, yeah lots
of ingenuity going into this
(laughs) and and the ability--
- Thank you
- Yeah you've just taken
literally, what, I don't know
how much but maybe ten
dollars of PVC pipe,
you've kind of created a jig
and then you've replicated,
you got four of them in
there and it keeps everything
super clean, I assume the
wheels can tuck in between
each of them.
- The wheels can tuck in
between each of them and
they all fit together nice,
and they're cut to fit
in the van so everything
fits in there really neatly.
Leave just the right amount
of space for everything
and keeps it from falling
over and moving around.
And the bikes stay out
of elements as well.
- Can people pick these up at your
local sponsor at the
Pony Shop up in Chicago
can people pick these up?
- Unfortunately not , people
are going to have to--
- Look you up on Esty.
- Their going to have
to look me up on Esty or
(laughs) use a little elbow grease.
But I think, I think these
are much within ability
of any, you know, master
carpenter. Master carpenter.
- I could not do this.
Thank you these look amazing.
- [Andrew] Thank you Jeremy.
- Mike has a beautiful set
up here at the Sram booth.
Talk to us about your, talk
to us about your tool box
and this rapid charging
station that you have.
- Yeah, so the tool box I custom made,
we have some red carbon
fiber piece build in to it.
I also have solar power battery charger
that are built into the bottom of it.
- [Jeremy] Yeah.
- With some charger cradles that are here.
But we also have for these
bigger events the need for
more charging to be done at once.
So we created a box that's a travel box.
Plug directly in and now we
can charge up to 8 batteries
at one time, we've also
got a USB because there is
always somebody who wants to,
charge their phone at some point.
But yeah that's everything
you see here is just
custom made with red
carbon fiber underneath it.
Has to be Scram red to
match us, so if something is
missing we know exactly what's missing.
- I love it, changing in the times,
it used to be housing and
cables and all this extra stuff
and now you guys are going electric.
Everything has to be electrified
and so having these
solutions to be able to,
to be able to kind of meet the demands of
what's going on here,
portable energy is got to be
a huge part of your life now.
- [Mike] Absolutely, and
I'll even carry a solar panel
out on days like today
where it's really rainy
and overcast but the
solar panel will actually
charge up enough to keep up with it.
- I love the ingenuity, awesome.
- Thank you.
- Okay so we moved over the
feedback tent and we met up
with Jeff, Jeff you have
your chain keep here
you even got a custom
edition for the Trek CXC cup.
Talk to us.
- [Jeff] Yeah this is
such a great event for us
and we love coming out here and racing
and participating in the expo.
So we deciding to make a
co-branded Feedback Sports
Trek version of our chain
keeper that works for both
through axles and QR.
- [Jeremy] Awesome, and
this is something that can
literally like if I have a
bike that's, like you said,
through axle or regular
just quick release,
this goes on it and tensions the chain
and allows me to like clean my
bike, or store it, or rack it
or whatever.
- Traveling too, a lot of
people like to take their,
obviously their wheels
off in their travel bag
and this keeps chain tension on the chain
so it's not slapping
around that chain stand.
- Yeah, very cool all
right, thank you so much.
- You bet thanks for stopping by.
- Okay we ran over to the Stan's tent
and they were packing up
but we got a glimpse of a
new tire, and Drew tell us
about what's going on with this.
- So we got our prototype
mud tire from Maxxis
we do a little bit of modification to it
so there are kind of a wide center knob
that we trim up a little bit
so that it sheds mud a little better.
It's what the girls prefer,
hopefully we won't have to use
it tomorrow, we'll see what
the weather does though.
- It's lookin pretty rainy out there
It's a working prototype
for sure and obviously
It's a, It's tubeless design
so a lot of riders we've
seen doing tubulars but
stans, obviously known
for being tubeless and
your technology that
you have there is a, I believe
a patented rim as well.
- [Drew] It is, it is we've
got five different patents on
our rim shape but kind of
our whole deal is that the
tubeless that we've been
running the cross team
for a number of years so we're
happy to support athletes
and be a part of the sport.
And we're excited about
the world cup tomorrow.
- What, what is the lowest
pressure do you can get away with
on a tire like this,
prototype or not, just curious
I think that it's--
- We run well into the low teens.
I think the lowest cord we ran
last year was something like
thirteen- fourteen.
- Wow
- We get them low
- It's come a long way. (laughs)
So cool to see. All right
well thank you very much.
- Thank you Jeremy.
- So that's all the tech
for the Waterloo World Cup
here at Trek HQ.
It's a fun time for me I hope
you guys enjoyed the video.
If you like this please
give it a thumbs up
leave a comment below, let
us know what you liked the
most and if you want to subscribe to GCN
please click right here.
