Argon 18 E117 Tri+ | Does it worth the money?
Sport of Triathlon is expensive AF. Triathlon bike is probably one the biggest expenses that you will have to make as it may give you the most advantage on the course.
People often spend ridiculous amounts of money on their two-wheeled buddies, but totally forget about the main component of getting faster. I believe that the major gains in speed are being made investing in the engine, that pushes the pedals. For every hundred dollars spent on bike, you got to put another two hundred hours spent in training. Improving the bike will help you only so much, but your body is where all the gains need to occur.
Having said that I’ve been still wondering, how much speed can you actually get on a more expensive “fancy” bike? Why do people spend thousands of dollars on their bikes? Does it make sense?
To answer this questions I went on a ride, comparing three bikes:
- 2003 Specialized Allez Elite (My old road bike)
- Aquila Crono TRI Ultegra Di2 (my review)
- Argon 18 E-117 TRI+ Ultegra Di2 (Race wheels)
I rode the same stretch of the hilly road, totaling of 45 km (28 mi)
Both TT bikes are ridiculously faster than my old road bike on the same stretch of the road (45 km).
Argon 18 is the fastest and it’s almost 30 minutes faster than my old bike. Aquila is 5 minutes slower than Argon, but it worth considering that I ran race wheels on Argon, while the other one had a set of training wheels on. I am pretty sure that Aquila would go as fast as Argon on the same set of wheels.
Argon 18 E117
To be honest it was a love from the first sight. More about purchasing and the price I payed for this used bike is here.
Below are snapshots taken from Strava. 34 records were set on Argo, averaging 227 Watts (guesstimate calculated by strava software).
