Suddenly, after all these months of waiting, things are moving and I’m having to make important decisions about my new bike. Darren and I have been back and forth over the last couple of weeks on the first step along this road – designing the frame.

I won’t drag you down into the weeds with me, but essentially he supplied me with a ‘Version A’ design that was based on the results of questions I answered in his ‘workbook’ last year, which included a lot of body and bike measurements, my riding style, aches and pains, etc.

What came out of this was a design that was specifically made for long hours in the saddle (given my job and my recent penchant for ‘ultra’ stuff), but that retained ‘performance elements’ that would make the bike feel responsive. It also took into consideration my long torso / short legs, which basically means I need a longer top tube than most ‘normal’ people.

I wasn’t down totally with the visual of what he sent over so I asked him a few questions about making it look more traditional (plus a bunch of other queries), and he was very receptive to it all, replying in great detail about the whys and wherefores and, surprisingly, saying that he could change the ‘look’ (bringing the top tube a little more horizontal) without compromising our ‘goals’ above. This is the result so far – Version B:

Right, looks like a bike. That’s what I thought too, before digging into every measurement and angle and asking AI to tell me what I was looking at. I now know some things about rake, stack, trail, front center and some other stuff I can’t think of right now. It seems to be an intricate balancing act, building a bike, and I feel more and more like I’m in good hands.

Next step I fear is the dreaded choices I have to make on components. I might need your thoughts and prayers for that one.