AliApex to the test

I took my self-built TT bike to its first race. Also my first TT in two years. I used to ride time trials before, but at some point I noticed my bike was simply not competitive. And that is a very annoying thing in a TT, because you can be doing the best effort of your life and still get absolutely cooked by someone who spent 10k on their bike and lives in a windtunnel.

So I sold the bike and did not do TT’s for a while. But this year we are focusing on the team time trial with the team, so I decided to give it another shot. Which meant I wanted to build a competitive TT bike. The base is an Apex Infinity. Not exactly the most advanced TT frame ever made, but good enough to start a small engineering project in my living room.

I started modifying:
- 165 mm cranks.
- Single speed 56T chainring.
- Replaced mechanical shifting with my old 11-speed Di2 derailleur.
- AliExpress extensions.
- AliExpress shifter buttons.
- Some wiring.
- An old junction box from the internet.
- And, most importantly, two demolished old Di2 shifters to make the whole thing work.
- AliApex is born.

Race day itself started with the TT circus. I arrived 1h and 15min early. Three other teammates were also riding and luckily one had a camper with an extension, because rain was expected and I was absolutely not looking forward to a wet warm-up. In the end it stayed dry though.

What did surprise me again is how serious people are with TT warm-ups. Beeping Garmins everywhere. Strict protocols. Nose strips. Turbo trainers. People staring at their stems like the opening 20 minutes of the race depend on achieving the perfect pre-effort sweat rate.

I mostly warm up by feeling. Keep it relaxed. I don’t like making the whole thing bigger than necessary. If you zone in too much during a warm-up you start feeling how your legs are, I prefer not to know.

The course was a good test. First six kilometres a bit stepwise uphill. Two, three percent, flat section, two, three percent again, flat again. Then around four kilometres of flat to the turning point and back.
On the way out, I thought I was flying, doing 53 km/h on the flat. For a moment I genuinely thought: ah, I have built a rocket ship. Turns out: tailwind.
On the way back I was doing 45, 46 km/h and absolutely dying. In hindsight, I should have known. I paced it like the hard part was basically done half way through, while actually the headwind part still needed proper power.
Numbers were okay-ish though:
408 watts average. 47.6 km/h average speed. All in all: not unhappy.

Especially because the setup was still not ideal yet. I didn’t have my disc wheel, because I discovered three days before the race that it didn’t fit... The best I could arrange was a borrowed 90 mm rear wheel.

Apart from the wheelset, I want to tweak the cockpit a bit more, mainly closing the gap between my chest and the extensions.

The next goal is qualifying for nationals, 30th of May, which I hope is possible with some tweaks on AliApex.

Hayley Simmonds13 days ago

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That service course image looks very familiar 🙈😅
Why didn’t the disc fit?! Too tight in the chainstay?

Arne13 days ago

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It was a team wheel @hayleyrsimmonds , wrong body for the cassette...

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