Building my Roo!

"So pumped for this season because I have a new piece of equipment.  My Quintana Roo PR5 arrived this week.  I have unboxed it and assembled it as sent.  Here it is!

Well, that was the opening to my draft blog post pre-COVID-19!  My how things changed this year.  This post was originally going to describe how I upgraded my new ride and was riding it in races by now.  Well, obviously that is not the case.

So, as I began describing several months ago, this was NOT how my QR PR5 would remain.  I saved a lot of money through my TeamZoot discount and used that savings to make some upgrades.  Shortly after I snapped these photos, I commenced my personalization of this bike to make it race ready for me.

First, I swapped out the Ultegra front brake assembly with my TriRig Omega X front brake.  I have invested so much in race wheels the last few years that I opted not to go for the disk brakes on my new bike.  When I consider a new bike build in five to ten years from now, I'll be ready to reinvest (mostly because I hope to be making more money by then, lol.) 

Next up, pedals.  I purchased a new pair of Dura-Ace PD-R9100 Pedals.  These are carbon fiber and much lighter than the Shimano pair I have on my Trek Speed Concept.  I contemplated Speedplay pedals for a long time before pulling the trigger on these pedals.  One part of my bike fit that I still have not settled on is the amount of float in my foot position.  These pedals give me the most flexibility to play with this.  Again, a future build when I am more experienced and understand my fit better, I might go with Speedplay.  Another reason here is that I do so much riding indoors that I really like the ease of use of the Shimano set-up and honestly don't want to go through the process of learning a new pedal on my brand new bike.  May be wimpy, but I am happy with this decision.

The stock cockpit of the PR5 is a 42mm aluminum base bar with aluminum Profile Design extensions.  I have a 42mm Profile Design SVET R carbon fiber base bar on my Speed Concept already.  Rather than swapping that out, I purchased a new 40mm Profile Design SVET R carbon fiber base bar and Profile Design T4 carbon fiber extensions.  This gave me more drop, makes me more aero, and also reduces the weight of the bike.  Plus, the airfoil design of the Profile Design base bar looks way better than the stock aluminum base bar from QR.  The bracket between the bars is for my Profile Design BTB bottle.

I went with Di2 on this new rig and am really excited to go to electronic shifting.  I was not willing to get crazy with an oversized pulley system so I went with the T11 Hyper Pulley Wheels from SLF Motion.  If it were not for the discount with them from TeamZoot, I may not have bothered with this upgrade.  I also decided to go with waxing my chain on a routine basis.  So far on a few training rides, I am really happy with the wax option.  It keeps things really nice and clean.

The smallest crank length QR could provide from their stock was 165mm.  I was surprised to learn when the bike arrived that I was upgraded with a Praxis crankset and an upgraded bottom bracket bearing from Praxis.  It is a nice set-up so I am going to keep this going forward in case I might want to adjust down the road.  I was fitted to 160mm cranks this fall and have been training at this length thus far with good results.  Unfortunately, a160mm crank size severely limited my options for a crank based power meter which I prefer.  Therefore, I went with the ALDU Rotor Crank Set with a 52/36 round chain rings and their new InSpider power meter.  Unfortunately, demand was very high at the time I ordered the cranks, so I had to wait eight weeks to get this and complete my build.  Again, Rotor's sponsorship of TeamZoot really helped make this decision easier.  I'll save my long story of botched bottom bracket replacements for another day!  Let's just say it took me three tries and two months for waiting for the right tools to get this upgrade completed!

So without further ado, here is my final build with the Reynolds 40mm deep wheel.  I will update the post with my Reynolds Disc on the rear and Williams 80 on the front when race day comes around.  For now, she has felt great on the training rides thus ride.  My Speed Concept remains on the trainer full time now for getting after it indoors!