Serotta Taking on Tri? LAVA Tours Serotta Cycles
As I searched my brain for the perfect analogy to just what was going through my mind as I sat atop the adjustable fit cycle at Serotta International Cycling Institute (SICI), Paraic McGlynn, marveling at the new fit I had just undergone, the calculated, cool Irishman who stands as the antithesis of what it is to be Irish, came up with the perfect one:
“What is it they say? ‘It’s always the children of the cobbler who have the worst shoes.’”
And there it was: the perfect description of my recent fit with McGlynn. As a journalist, I’ve been witnessing bike fits for more than a decade. My first personal fit came at the hands of Roch Frey and Paul Huddle at the then-early-for-bike-use San Diego Low Speed Wind Tunnel. I still have that bike fit, somewhere.
On VHS. Yes, VHS.
Over the last 10 years, I’ve watched Tim DeBoom and Fabian Cancellara, Chris Lieto and Lance Armstrong get fitted by industry experts. Seen Steve Hed and Dan Empfield and John Cobb do their thing. Have gone through Empfield’s FIST fitting program, and by default consider myself skilled at doing fits on other folks. But when I comes to self-administration? I’m evidently clueless.
Which is why it was a treat to have McGlynn, the director of applied cycle science at SICI to all the legwork. And of course, I’m a child of the cobbler. And man, my proverbial shoes were threadbare.
McGlynn and Ben Serotta invited LAVA Magazine to Saratoga Springs, New York a few weeks ago. The genesis of the discussion was to get into our hands the MeiVici AE tri bike for a coming review in our pages. And when it comes to attention to detail, there are few greater names in the bike industry than Serotta, a man who still clearly considers his industry a labor of love.
“I’ve always loved riding bikes and building things,” Serotta said. “In my upbringing, the question always was, there has to be a justification for your existence. Just to be in business is not a good enough reason. The challenge and excitement is to bring something new and better to the table. Pushing that bar up is who we are.”
As a company, Serotta has a storied history in the road racing world; namesake Ben Serotta earned his fame building bikes for the American 7-11 and Coors Light road teams, with riders including Davis Phinney, Chris Carmichael, Bob Roll, Tom Schuler and Alex Steida making their name under a Serotta ride. Serotta created the first aero pursuit bike in 1977, developed the s-bend chainstay in 1984 and is known, along with Richard Sachs, for having some of the finest dropouts and lugs, sought by custom builders world over.
Today, the Serotta brand retains its upper-echelon integrity, building all its bikes at their Saratoga Springs facility, maintaining a boutique experience that is synonymous with the name. The factory is fronted by a classic wooden home that stands as an airy, fit studio. Behind it exists Serotta’s fourth factory, which broke ground in 2001 (and stands as a bit of an improvement over Ben Serotta’s first “factory,” which was run out of a barn, with the first spray booth operating in an old chicken coop).
For its road credentials, Serotta is making inroads into triathlon, and not a token effort. The company sponsors the West Point Triathlon Team. The squad, coached by former pro and West Point grad Tony DeBoom and run by Major Andy Caine, has been pleased to no end about the relationship, which has seen the collegiate squad whose women’s team won nationals and a means team who finished second to UC Boulder in April in Lubbock, Texas,
“Before our relationship with Serotta, we had a hodge-podge of bikes that hadn’t been fit to the athletes,” said Major Andy Caine, West Point Tri Team manager. To treat these athletes at the elite level that they’re at with good fits and bikes built to their specifications, it’s been a match made in heaven.
“And by the way, we out split every team on the bike,” Caine added with a laugh.
The results of the relationship: team member Ashley Morgan, a girl whose best half Ironman time was a 4:30, got one of the first MeiVici AE’s off the line, and won her age group at Clearwater, averaging over 25 miles per hour on the bike. And she beat me,” Caine said.
The company also sponsors top age group triathlete Paul Fronhofer. On his visit to Serotta, he told us that it’s been a unique sponsorship, one he feels helped him safely develop his bike strength that earned him a 30-34 age group win at Ironman Germany this summer.
“When you’re spending as much money as you are on a bike, you should go without it,” Fronhofer said of his detailed fit. “You just gotta have it, and Serotta has delivered this to a degree I’ve yet to see even remotely matched.”
Serotta didn’t just want to make bikes. He wanted bikes that rode to a hallmark that he set. And part achieving that hallmark came in a perfect fit before building the bikes. That focus on the rider before the build led to the advent of the Serotta Size Cycle, which has evolved into a fit machine that is not only housed at the Saratoga Springs location, but at select retailers around the country.
So in that spirit, Before the MeVici AE would see its first tubeset drawn, I’d undergo by a fit with McGlynn at his SICI studio.
FIT ALWAYS FIRST
As per the build of the MeiVici that will be set up for test to my fit parameters, McGlynn underwent an extensive fit. But before I had a chance to experience Serotta’s impressive size cycle, McGlynn sat with me to address a battery of questions, about any limitations in flexibility, details about any past injuries, what my goals were in terms of riding, the predominant terrain upon which I expect to be training and racing the bike, what characteristics I valued in a frame, whether it be stiffness, comfort or handling.
“Paraic has been able to identify not just performance issues, but injury prevention issues, Caine said. “In Ashley’s case, she a hipbone that rises higher than the other, so they built a bike that took those things into consideration so she can ride harder without any effects. His knowledge about the body, particularly the lower extremities, it’s amazing. I don’t know any pros that are getting this level of treatment.”
An extensive analysis of my feet and legs came up with a right leg with a high degree of external rotation, which was the source of a knee that dives in. With an array of contact point products, His recommendation based on foot shape was for a Sidi shoe, with a bit of medial cleat shimming to prevent the knee’s inward dive, making for a more linear pedal stroke.
Riding the size cycle provided frontal and side video analysis and CompuTrainer power data, with pedal stroke analysis delivered via Dartfish. What I learned was that my standard seat angle was at nearly 80 degrees. Steep, yes, and in discussion with McGlynn, likely the process of riding on feel, wanting to feel power coming through the quads. And in that position, my right knee wandered about, trying to find a linear drive.
A gradual adjust of my position back to a 78-degree position. The saddle went up and back, the bars a bit up. And my power went up. And after several rides requiring a bit of cognizant self-monitoring, my comfort went way up; I felt I had the saddle underneath me; instead riding perched on the nose. I was still applying power through the quads, but was engaging the rest of the leg, including the hamstrings, a bit more.
While the test bike is still being built, I was able to apply the fit to an existing ride, and found that my power went up a few watts each ride, with a greater degree of comfort. A recent result at Ironman 70.3 Lake Stevens resulted in a 2:48 bike split, which represented about five minutes to seven minutes better than I had expected on the rolling course based on topography. The run off the bike was excellent as well—until the heat got on top of me.
And on a nearly weekly basis, McGlynn called me to check in, see if there were any issues with the new fit, which is standard operating procedure for him in his fit and build process. My message throughout my adaptation? “All good.”
FACTORY TOUR
A tour of the Serotta factory was one of the most impressive experiences in our tenure. Not because of the end product, but because of the degree of self-reliance. There are no parts in the factory that are outsourced. If a tool is needed, they cut it. If a dropout with a slightly different feature is desired, they create it. “It didn’t start out that we necessarily wanted to make everything,” Serotta said, “ but rather it came from when we went to suppliers—many well-known suppliers—and couldn’t get the consistency and quality. We also wanted to be innovative. It’s not the easy way, but it’s who we are.”
From that fit comes the first level of customization in the frame: the tubing. Whether working with steel, titanium or carbon fiber, Serotta has a wide range of tubesets that deliver a different ride experience. To illustrated it, McGlynn held up three tubes. Each looked no different from the other, but built into a ride, each would tell a different story. “ We have forks of four different rakes, and three different layups. We think it’s very important to tune the bike and even the fork to the rider, particularly with smaller riders, so that someone who is 110 pounds doesn’t get the same bike as someone who’s 250 pounds. The smaller on a stronger, stiffer tubeset will get a harsher ride, and we don’t want that experience for them.”
While the Saratoga Springs factory is home to most of the building, another Serotta factory exists, this one in Poway, Calif. It plays host to the carbon fiber segment of the company’s business. It’s also home to finite element analysis software and rapid prototyping equipment, allowing Serotta to build out any idea instantly and check fit and aesthetics on a 3D plastic model. Fronted by respected carbon fiber engineering expert Mike Lopez, the tubes are laid up and drawn in Poway, then shipped to Saratoga Springs for an intricate bonding (or lugged, depending on the bike) build.
Once the carbon tubes are selected and the tubesets are mitered (cut to perfectly mate with another tubeset) and bonded to create a raw frame of exacting fit (and fixed with any added fixtures like titanium cable guides), the handcraftsmanship comes into play; sanding, painting, finishing, pin striping detailing. Your choice of PPG paint colors (of which Serotta has recently gone to an eco-friendly waterbased paint) help finish what is a hallmark classic look.
Throughout the factory, Serotta employees act more as artists, setting frame in gigs, doing hand-polishing, paint detailing, putting frames in a bake room, making a 100 yard area look like a giant nursery, every frame given the attention of a newborn babe as it moves through the creation process.
BUILDING ON VICTORY (BY BUILDING VICTORY)
One element we noticed through the Serotta line while walking through the factory was with the beauty of many of the seatstay/chainstay junctures, most sporting curved stays, and many wearing a pivot bolt as the seatstay met the dropout. That’s not just an aesthetic feature, and as McGlynn explained, it’s a feature that is relevant in the MeiVici AE (Italian for “My Victory”) tri bike as well. “That’s a feature in Serotta bikes, with the reasoning being to keep that rear wheel on the ground,” he said. “ And that’s particularly important for tri bikes, especially when using stiff disc wheels or deep-dish rear wheels. Rather than over-engineer the chainstays, we simply engineer the right amount of vertical compliance through this joint.”
Which makes for an interesting challenge for the company: how to get an aero bike, with deep aero tubes, to wear the ride qualities of a steel classic. But the company was unyielding. “When you put that much surface area to a frame, it’s hard to get it to still ride like a Serotta,” McGlynn said. “It’s not a case of simply designing a fancy shape, or haphazardly deciding where to have the cable come through the frame, what that internal cable run does to the vertical compliance of the frame, so that when you have an Ironman athlete spending four and a half to seven or eight hours on the bike, they’re going to be comfortable.”
“One of the things we hear from the Chris Carmichaels and Bob Rolls is that the carbon bikes of today resonate to the steel bikes of old,” McGlynn said. “All our bikes, from aero steel to carbon/ti to aero carbon, the testing and build DNA goes back to those steel bikes that the 7-11 guys rode during the Tour de France.”
Serotta concurs. One thing we we’re proud of if that when we say we can deliver a ride experience, we mean it,” Serotta said. “A lot of people will claim that, but unless you control the process, can offer tuning in any medium, you really can’t do it. I would say I can almost guarantee that if I built three different bikes of different materials, you wouldn’t notice a ride difference.
While the wide front end doesn’t present narrowly to the wind, the headtube, with a 1 1/8” top bearing and 1.5-inch lower bearing “allows you to be more sophisticated with the shape of both the fork and of the downtube, both aerodynamically and functionally with regard to steering,” McGlynn said.
One could say Serotta’s mantra is hurry, slowly. “With Serotta, it’s gonna take time and patience; time doing your fit, It’s not like going to your shop and walking out same day,” West Point’s Caine said. “But every single athlete has been very, very happy with the bike once they’ve received it.
While LAVA waits for the MeiVici AE build to take place, we will follow up with a visit with Mike Lopez at the Serotta carbon fiber factory in Vista, Calif., where we’ll get a firsthand look at LAVA’s test bike in the process of being build, from tubeset up.
And check in soon for a Lunchtime Q&A with Ben Serotta, as we talked bike building, triathlon and an new tri model to add to his stable.
