Too Much Tech?

I’ve not made a secret of my slightly geeky love of technology when it can be used with bikes, or, to be honest, in any other way. It can, however, be taken just that little bit too far.

If you have a spare £22K kicking around and are in the vicinity of Harrods then you can get yourself one hell of a fancy bicycle. The snappily titled Factor 001 is custom built to fit each customer and comes as standard with Shimano’s electronic shifters and hydraulic disc brakes with the option of metal or ceramic discs, as well as integrated hydraulics and LED lighting. So far so much general top end type stuff, but the real magic is with the data capture kit, built by suppliers of Formula 1 and other racing cars as well as military, road car, nautical and aerospace applications, and able to give you a wide range of data in real time.

The system can show you how you’re performing over 15 parameters including crank force, chest expansion, rider position, speed and core body temperature and many more. It can probably even develop a robot to give you a re-creation of your ride whenever you like, in your living room.

It’s designed as a top-end training bike, which begs the question; if you’re training on something like this what on Earth are you going to find to race on?

FMFT, quite frankly, says;

A