3T Strada Pro—First Impressions

I picked up my 3T Strada Pro at the Bicycle Speed Shop in Houston (https://bicyclespeedshop.co).  I am now a 3T Bike Ambassador (https://us.3t.bike/en/), which means that I am supposed to find interesting routes to ride and document my journeys on social media and the 3T website.  In return, I have a new 3T Strada Pro (not free but I got a really good price) and a free 3T kit.

My 3T Strada Pro

The bike comes in a box and needs to be built up.  Having just built a new Open U.P. gravel bike (https://opencycle.com/up) from the frame up, I was anticipating a major project ahead.  On the Open U.P., I had to press in the bottom bracket, cut the steerer tube, thread the cables, and bleed the brakes.  Threading the cables and bleeding the hydraulic brakes on the Open U.P. were particularly nasty tasks.  In fact, this was easily the hardest build that I have ever done.  I learned things about threading cables and installing hydraulic disk brakes that I never wanted to know.  But I really do love my Open U.P.  Who would have thought that gravel riding could be so much fun.

My Open U.P.

On the other hand, the Strada Pro took me less than two hours to build.  Essentially, I had to put the wheels, handlebars, and pedals on the bike.  I swapped out the 100mm stem that came with the bike for a 130mm stem.  My original plan was to swap the pricey carbon 40cm AeroNova handlebars for a wider and less expensive set of alloy bars.  I thought that this would be easy, but it was not the case.  The brake and derailleur cables are threaded through the bars.  This means that I would have to rethread the cable housing through the frame and then bleed the brakes again.  Using the wisdom that I gained from building the Open U.P., I decided to put this part of the project on permanent hold.

Since I received my Strada Pro at a really good price and I wanted to do this project right, I decided to add on a power meter.  The bike comes with a SRAM Quarq Prime Power Ready crankset.  This means that you can buy the spider from Quarq for under $700, which is cheap for a power meter.  Switching the old spider for the new one is easy and takes less than 30 minutes.  See https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2017/04/quarq-dzero-power-meter-in-depth-review.html for an excellent in-depth review.

So how does it ride.  First, I am used to the 1x11 group from riding my Open U.P., so the switch to a 1x11 on the road wasn't a great leap.  The bike comes with a 50 tooth front chain ring and an 11-36 cassette.  The 50x36 gear is equivalent to a 39x28 or a 34x24 and is more than adequate for the hills of East Texas.  The climbs in this area consist primarily of rollers with a few hills that don't quite roll.  Of course, it will be a different story in France this summer.  I'm  thinking that a 42 or 44 tooth front chain ring with a 10-42 cassette on the rear will be needed for the likes of the Col du Tourmalet, Hautacam, and Mont Ventoux.  And I love the stopping power of disk brakes, and I think they will be especially nice in the mountains.  I won't have to worry about a blown tire from a rim that has just overheated.  The 70 Pirelli P Zero™ Velo 700 x 25c (28.3mm effective width on Discus C35 PRO) provide a comfortable ride.  It's easy to run the tires at 105–110 psi.  In addition, one can ride tubeless tires—something to explore for the future.

This bike is seriously fast.  I came down Austin Street this morning at almost 42 mph without pedaling.  On my Cervelo S3, also a fast bike, I have to pedal fairly hard to go over 40 mph.  The bike seems to be a bit skittish at high speeds (35+ mph), but this could be due to a number of things, including operator failure.