In our corner: Velocite bikes

Time to give some recognition to one of the three companies who are kind enough to support us on our adventure: Velocite Bikes. Alain alias Bibi and I are team riders with Velocite, Bibi riding a Magnus in M, and me a Geos in XL.

I came across Victor Major, the founder of Velocite one day when I wanted to build my first carbon bike. Wanting to be thrifty and looking for something special I looked for a nice frame, and Victor gave me the opportunity to try a prototype of the Helios (picture on the left is from the Julier Pass in St Moritz in 2009), a great bike that Karen and some other friends are riding, too, now.

Victor was great in taking on feedback from the testing and has been pushing product development hard over the last years. Velocite expanded its line in the meantime, stepping up its game: The Geos, a compact frame that is more comfortable over rough roads but still as stiff or stiffer than most of the top end frames from other companies in the head tube and bottom bracket area. Matt, who is preparing RAAM 2012, also rides it. The Helios got replaced by the Helios Aero, a very cool aero road bike that is not only aero, but also stiff, which is pretty difficult to pull off. Charlie actually rides one to good effect, when we can get him to ride with us :-). Then there is the Magnus that Alain rides, arguably one of the - if not the - stiffest and most aggressive frames you can buy today. Sucks for me because now I have even less of a chance during the infamous city limit sprints... Then there are also the Selene, a high quality aluminium frame (the only one that is fully shot peened) and the Flux, a very nice mountain bike hard tail.

A still missing piece of the puzzle is a dedicated frame for Ironman - a great time trial frame. Velocite is working on it, but being a small company and since they want to do things well, development has been taking a little while. But I am still hopeful that we might see something for 2012. We have talked with Victor about what's important to us in an Ironman bike, and if they are able to include the things we asked for, it is going to be a wicked machine :-).

Thanks again to Victor for the support!

La Grande