Best Yet!

The bar is high!  I’ve worked in the bike industry the past 25 years and have been blessed to own some of the best bikes in the world.  That said, my new custom Enve is the best yet!
 
The bespoke bike is a result of the perfect fit, dialed geometry, optimum frame design, and custom selected components. 
 
Performance / Ride Quality:  I have ridden over 1500 miles on my custom Enve.  Everything from fast Naples Velo group rides to the Multisport World Championships in Australia.  The bike just disappears under me, I become one with it.  This is the highest compliment I can make of a bike.
 
The fit and balance is perfect.  When cornering at the limit, I feel the tire’s contact with the road and carve a perfect line.  Riding In a tight – fast peloton I feel confident.  Jumping out of a corner or the bike accelerates fast and smooth.
 
Bike Fit and Design:  Perfect fit and balance are what should happen when you match great bike fitting, with excellent frame design and build execution.  I did the fitting and Enve provided the custom geometry, design and build.
 
You may ask could I get this ride quality from a manufacturer’s stock frame?  It’s possible, but in my personal experience, the answer is no.  I’ve tried, but I never get the perfect ride from a stock bike, and I have from several great custom bikes.
 
It’s possible that your perfect fit geometry is an exact match for a stock frame and parts spec.  But more likely changes are needed to achieve your perfect fit.  For example, stems come in 10mm increments.  What if you need 5mm less or more?  With a custom bike the geometry can be designed to the millimeter. 
 
In my case, my long legs require a 59cm bike for seat tube and most brands offer either 58 cm or 60cm.  And at 65 years old I need a higher bar height than a Pro-Tour racer, but not as high as a comfort oriented “all-road” bike.  In the past I have owned, 60 cm bikes and used shorter stems, but those bikes never felt as responsive or handled perfectly.  Same with 58 cm frames with spacers added under the stem to get the right stack height.  And I don’t like the look of a bike with a lot of spacers, or a short or angled up stem.  At the end of the day, it comes down to having your weight centered and balanced perfectly on the bike.
 
And the ride quality is not just from getting the fit right.  It also is determined by the frame design.   For example, bottom bracket height has a big effect on the balance and center of gravity of the bike.  This height is selected by the designed to match how and where the bike will be ridden.  Interestingly enough, (and this is rarely considered) changing to a tire width can adversely affect the bottom bracket height and handling.
 
If a bike’s bottom bracket height is optimized for road racing with 28mm tires, and you use 32mm tires, the center of gravity will be higher which will negatively affect cornering and descending speed.
 
Conversely if your bike was optimized for 40 mm gravel tires, it will have longer chain stays and a longer wheelbase, and the bike won’t be as responsive as a racing road bike.  In this case if you changed to 32 mm tires the bottom bracket height will be lowered, potentially causing a crank clearance problem when corning at the limit.
 
Bike manufacturers also design bikes to have an optimum “trail” (the horizontal distance from where the front wheel touches the ground to where the steering axis intersects the ground), which effects the handling of the bike.  Racing road bikes need to be responsive and handle quick for tight pack riding and have shorter trail than gravel, or mountain bikes.
 
On a gravel bike we are constantly bouncing around from rocks and uneven terrain.  In this case longer trail is used to tone down the handling, so we aren’t constantly correcting (or likely over-correcting) for all the imperfections from the terrain.
 
Enve’s stock bike geometry table illustrates this.  Their 58cm road bike (Melee) has 56.5 cm trail with a 27mm tire.  Their 58 cm gravel bike (Mog) has 62.4 cm of trail with a 40mm tire.  Yes, even the size of the tire changes the effective trail.   For the Mog a 35mm tire has 61.1 cm of trail and a 44 cm tire has 62.8.  You can really feel this difference in trail.
 
My custom Enve has a 73mm bottom bracket drop, is optimized for 28mm tires and has 43mm of fork rake and 58mm of trail.
 
The take-away is that with frame design, there are many small differences in design (even tire width) that have a big impact on bike handling and stability.  All these factors need to be considered when creating (or buying) the perfect bike.
 
The perfect trail is subjective, and is dependent on where you ride, the surface, the tire size, and your skill (and taste) as a rider or racer.  Bringing this all back to a custom bike, you can have your bike designed to match all the attributes you desire.  Custom Enve bikes can be built to have road racing trail, all-road or in-between both.

HANDMADE IN THE USA
 
Of course, even if the manufacturer nails the geometry, it doesn’t mean the bike will ride great.  This is where engineering, experience and design come in.  Headquartered in Odgen, Utah, Enve Composites has been a leader in carbon technology since 2007.
 
Sue and I had the opportunity to tour Enve’s manufacturing facility and join many of their staff in the epic Grodeo gravel race from their factory.  Enve’s technology, passion and cycling culture came shining through.  I am proud to have my bike designed and hand built in Ogden, Utah!
 
Esthetics:  This is the fun part!  With custom you don’t have to ride a bike that looks like thousands of others.  You can pick your colors and paint scheme.  For mine I picked a red, white and blue theme as I was racing for Team USA in the World Triathlon Multisport World Championships.  It was more than just picking the colors and fade scheme.  I got a call from, Joaquin Herrera an old colleague who now manages Enve’s custom program.  He was with their head painter, and they asked if I wanted some depth and metallic added to the colors.  I said I did and asked if they could incorporate this depth not only to the red and blue, but to the white as well.
 
The result was gorgeous.  Outside the colors have amazing depth, and it is so cool how the blue fades into the red.  And having the stem, handlebar, spacers, seat post, and water bottle cages painted to match is just over the top.  I also picked custom white decals for the wheels to pop with the painted white logos on the frame, bars and stem.
 
Components and Wheels:  Technology is constantly advancing and part of the “best yet” is a result of selecting state of the art parts and components.
 
The biggest advancement in recent years has come from wheel and tire design.  Thanks to the added tire clearance from the switch to disc brakes, Pro Tour racers are now racing on wider carbon rims and tires 28 or 30mm wide.  Tubeless tires at lower air pressure have become the norm.  This setup is not only much faster, it offers better traction and comfort and in my experience less flats than a traditional tube and tire setup.
 
With Enve custom you get your pick of any of their excellent wheels!  Look no further than, Tour de France winner Tadej Pogacar to see a hot setup!  He normally rides Enve’s SES 4.5 for climbing courses with 30mm tubeless Continental GP5000 S TR tires.  I choose the slightly deeper and more aero SES 6.7 for Florida riding.  These wheels just sing with tubeless Vittoria’s 28mm Corsa Pro tires.  I weight 150 pounds and on good dry roads I’ve been running 65 psi rear and 60 front.
 
It was fun to choose the exact component part spec as well, right down to the crank length size and gearing.  I choose Sram’s awesome new Red group in a 2X setup with 172.5 cranks with a power meter.  This may seem subtle, but I choose a bigger than normal 50 tooth large chain ring, which is perfect for our fast Florida group rides.  I find most of the time I’m more in the middle range of my cogs with less chain angle, and when it comes to that tail wind sprint I don’t spin out.
 
With Enve custom you also get to choose either a one-piece bar-stem combo or from any of their fantastic bars with an in-route aero stem.  I chose the Aero Road bar which have a medium flare, and allow for a custom clip-on aero bar, which I needed for one of my races at the World Championships.

​Custom or Semi-Custom is NOT More Expensive! 
 
An Enve custom is not more expensive than a top-level Trek or Specialized road bike and you get to pick the exact components, wheels, saddle, bar and stem that you want.
 
Custom can even be less expensive.  For example, if you bought a Specialized Tarmac for $14,000 and had to swap out the bar-stem for the correct size, that costs an additional $600 plus the labor to re-cable the bike and bleed the brakes.
 
Worth the Wait!
 
If you are reading this blog, I suspect that you have already own several bikes and are looking to up your game.  I can assure you that an Enve custom will be your dream ride, and it’s worth the wait!
 
Here is the process:

• Schedule a consultation and bike fitting.
• Pick your components and paint scheme.
• We submit a custom bike form to Enve.
• Enve designs your bike. (This takes 1-2 Weeks)
• We will review with you and sign off on the design.  We need a deposit to cover the frame and Enve parts at this time.
• Enve Builds Your Frame 8-10 Weeks.
• We build your bike and do a final fitting.

 
In conclusion, my Enve custom has elevated my cycling, and I love that it’s one of a kind, designed to fit my body, style and taste!
 
Enjoy your ride!
 
Greg
 
 More Info on Enve Custom

• Why custom Video
• Custom aerobar extension video,
• https://www.naplescyclery.com
• Custom Enve Paint Booth
• Naples Cyclery Enve Page