We Swapped Bikes For A Month. This Is What We Learned.

What happens when you swap bikes with your mate? Si and Alex put the question to the test by trading their beloved Canyon Aeroad and Ultimate bikes for a month to see what they could learn. Find out if the grass is greener on the other side and whether they’ve found their perfect bike matches. It’s a showdown between aero and all-rounder!

Chapters: ⏱️
00:00 – Introduction: The Big Bike Swap
02:50 – Aeroad vs. Ultimate
04:52 – First ride impressions
06:09 – Alex’s comparison
07:30 – Si’s take on the Ultimate
10:50 – The guys’ conclusions
13:53 – Did they enjoy it?

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As cyclists, we obsess over our bikes. The right riding position, the right saddle, the right tires, the right wheels, every detail, just how you like it. Yeah. Not to mention the type of bike it is in the first place, too. Is it an aero bike or a lightweight bike or endurance? But what would happen if you had to swap bikes? Would somebody else’s bike setup and equipment choices just suck? Or would it be a positive experience? And what could you learn? You’re going to learn a lot, mate. Thanks. [Music] Are you sure you can handle a bike like this? Oh yeah, obviously. I don’t know, mate. Canyon have got a pretty strict policy on who is allowed to ride white arrows. There’s Matthew Vanderpool. There’s me. That’s it. Well, I I’m Look, I’m going to be perfectly fine. I’m going to make that bike extra cool. Right. I was in my head. I wanted to try and roast your bike setup, but I’m looking at it now and I’m thinking, you know what? It’s actually pretty good. Although you have got an arrow bike, but no arrow drops. Matthew Vanderpool doesn’t have arrow drops either. So instead of like them, instead of racing the bike, he’s going to race you. You basically are trying to think that you’re Matthew Vanderpole when you ride this bike, but I hate to break it to you. You’re nowhere near as good as him and never will be as cool as him. No, also quite a lot older. Considerably older. Yeah. Okay. Well, what is that bar tape, Alex? You’ve taken a really nice bike and you’ve made it look like a clown bike. Did you spend actual money on those? Unfortunat Unfortunately, yes, I did. Right. It just it didn’t pan out how I expected it would. How did you expect it would pan out? Putting like gold tipped bar tape. I mean, is that like um is that like getting frosted tips in your hair or something? Yeah, I think frosted tips would have been cooler to be honest. And what’s what’s you’ve got these amazingly bling wheels and then you put like tan wool tires on that just like Does that go again? I thought it was going to work. It didn’t. Look. Okay, you’ve made your point pretty clear here. There’s quite a few options that you can sort of roast and pick fault with here. I’m struggling with your bike, but whatever. So, what? Hang a minute. Just before we go any further, what we’re saying here is that my bike that I’ve set up is really cool and your bike super nerd, you’ve admitted you’ve not done that bike justice. Okay, enough of that silliness. Let’s have some real talk about these bikes, right? Yeah. I’m genuinely really excited about this. Okay. We’ve been lucky enough to be riding canyons here on GCN for 10 years. Okay. And in that time, I’ve only ever had an air road from a road bike. Like, yeah, I’ve ridden an Ultimate a couple of times, but this has been the bike that I’ve had consistently. I’m just so intrigued about what what opportunities lie with the Ultimate. And, you know, like I was 32 when I got my first aid. I’m now 42. All right, grandad. Yeah, maybe my perspectives are changing. Well, maybe. I mean, this is the whole point of it, right? And I’m going to sound like a total here, but I am a bit of a loser. Right. And the Thanks. The decisions between what type of bike and setup to ride is the type of thing that keeps me awake at night. Right now, I know people are going to think that’s a ridiculous thing to say, but I think it rings true for a lot of people. So, at the point of buying a new bike, right, you need to decide whether you go with an aero bike or a lightweight or roundup. Most people have got to make that decision. And even if you’ve already got your bike and you’ve had it for a little while, I think it’s pretty common that people will be looking at the other bikes and setups that their friend or riding buddies have and go, you know what, maybe I would be better on a different setup. Yeah, totally. I’m with you on that. I too am in that bracket, you know, and it’s not just what your mates are riding either. you know what you see like pros riding or you know the videos you’re watching or the magazine articles that you’re reading. No, no one reads magazines anymore. Sorry. Website articles. I’ve shown my age again. But yeah, no, I’m I’m totally with you on that. And uh and then it’s all the little bits that you choose like the fact I’ve got one by, you’ve got two by, you’ve got shallower wheels, I’ve got deeper wheels, you know, like I’ve got superior bar tape as we’ve confirmed. You didn’t appreciate it, Jo. No, I didn’t. Um, but it’s going to be fun to switch bikes. I’m super intrigued to see how we get on. I also think it’s going to make me look a bit cooler, but anyway, we’ll we’ll brush past that for now. I do have a cool bike. Um, so I guess what we’re going to do is switch bikes and see in a few days, I guess. Yeah. Okay, we’ve hit the first climb of the commute. And already I’m wishing I had a small chain ring. I’ve got one or two gears left on this cassette and there’s more bigger kinds to come. Wish me luck. Okay, so first ride on this bad boy done. It was actually a commute home from TCN Mega Base. First ride impressions. Well, this bike feels fast. It feels bumpier than the Ultima. I think I like it. I can’t quite decide just yet, but one thing is for absolute sure, it looks so freaking cool. A few days of swapping bikes eventually turned into a week. A week soon turned into a few weeks and a few weeks soon became a month. But that’s a good thing because it meant I could do a few bike races. I could do multiple group rides, commute most days, and of course ride to loads of different coffee shops. So, after all that, it was time to see what, if anything, we’ve learned from this experiment. But before that, let me remind you why I chose the Ultima in the first place. So, it was about a year ago that I made a video explaining why I switched from the Canyon Airroad to the Canyon Ultimate, the more do it all bike, and that was because it suited the type of riding I did most of the time. Now, since then, I’ve ridden that bike absolutely loads. I’ve been on big epic adventures. I’ve climbed mountain roads. So, I’ve dropped Sigh, dropped Connor, dropped Ollie, did a time travel with Hank, ridden to work, and been on more group rides than I care to remember. In fact, I’ve loved riding that bike. Enough about that, though. We need to talk about size Canyon Aero, a bike which I’ve also really enjoyed riding and I’ve done loads of different rides on it. I’ve also tried loads of different setups. I’ve tried the Aero drops, the classic drops, loads of different saddles. I’ve tweaked the riding position. I’ve tried different wheels. I’ve tried different tires. And of course, because I’m a total nerd, I’ve tried loads of different tire pressures, too. Now, broadly speaking, I’ve actually quite enjoyed this bike in the setup of how Sai had it. Although, I do want to say I think I prefer it with the aero drops rather than the classic drops. The wheel depth of 60 mil works perfectly with this bike, as does the tire width of 28 mm. However, one by is really not for me. Do you know what? My commute to work is particularly hilly and I haven’t enjoyed slogging up the hills at the end of the day when I’m tired and worn out, but it was still fun going quite fast. So, you know, there you go. I’ll be honest, I was super excited to ride one of Alex’s bikes cuz as we all know, he takes great care of them and puts a lot of thought and effort into it. So, frankly, I was quite disappointed when I got a hold of it and I realized that every single one of the bolts on here was standard and black. The rear derailer hanger is standard, still black. The chain, not not only is it not gold, not only is it not anodized funky colors, it’s not even waxed. So, I think maybe well perhaps perhaps he thought I’d robbed stuff off it and so it’s sort of like taking it back to standard. Um, I’ve ridden it for about 400 kilometers, almost exclusively my commute to and from work. And in that time, I’ve never ever ever got used to that horrendous bar tape. Every time, mate, you got to stop talking about bar tapes. It It is horrendous. Anyway, all right. It’s not my cup of tea. Bit bling for my tastes. Although the paint job actually was a little bit too understated, so I don’t quite know where I sit on that front. Um, now I kept the bike pretty much as Alex gave it to me. Uh, I did swap the wheels out for a deeper set, but felt like it didn’t really suit the bike. My first impressions were that it was ever so slightly more agile and sort of like I want to say responsive, but also you could argue that it was twitchy compared to the Aero. um potentially due to the lighter weight, potentially just due to the shallower, lighter wheels, but that was my first thing that I noticed. But then what’s funny is that you get used to whatever you’re riding. So after a couple of rides, it stopped feeling different and it just feels normal now and really nice. I don’t feel like I maximized the potential of it. My commute is relatively flat, so I had no alpine climbs to dance up. potentially a little bit more compliant at the back, but again, you know, not super duper noticeable. After a couple of weeks riding it, I did notice there was something here that’s um it’s a front derailer. And actually, there is a little chain ring on this bike, which um I’ll be totally honest, I didn’t didn’t use once. Uh so, uh I’m quite looking forward to going back to one by just because it’s different and it’s cool. Although bloom and glad of a power meter on here, so I do need to get some power meter pedals for the Aero. Um, I miss having a white bike that my my Aero’s just cool. I’m not a huge fan of this paint job, although I know a lot of people are. Uh, and I was quite pleased to see Alex had left his Princetons on here cuz they do look suitably bling, don’t they? But yeah, the the only other thing because I basically, as I said, left the bike set up as it is, other than tweaking the seat, but I really don’t like where Alex leaves his lever hoods. Not for me. Way too upright. And actually, of all the things, that’s probably the thing that’s bugged me for the last month. He’s got his levers set up in like I don’t know, like a chopper position. Okay, we finished moaning about my bar tape enough now, right? I mean, frankly, I could go on about it a little bit more, but all right, I’m going to cut you off here. Let’s move on to more important things. Did you like my bike? Yes, I did really like your bike, but like, you cleaned the chain before you give it back? No, I haven’t. It’s got fresh wax on it, though. It’s just not like super super clean. Anyway, enough about that. But I know that on paper, right, the Ultima is the bike that matches up with the type of riding that I do most of the time. I’ve said it before. There’s no doubt about it in my mind. But having ridden your bike, when you do want to drop the hammer and go fast, I do end up with this massive grin on my face. But away from that, I’m then sort of riding around on a bike which I know isn’t necessarily the bike that’s right for that situation. Puts me in like a real predicament, right? And it’s actually brought me to think of a third option which I hadn’t thought of before. Right. So when I got the ultimate, there was only kind of like one setup and it’s how I’ve got it now. But now you can get it with the pace bar and the arrow drops, meaning you end up with a halfway house between the two bikes, which is throwing a curveball out there for me. And it what it means is that you get to do more fiddling with bikes late at night or early in the morning. Absolutely buzzing about that. Win-win. Yeah. I I drew two conclusions right from riding your bike. Firstly is that once you’ve got the position sorted. So like things that that continue to annoy me. I should have just taken your bar tape off and moved the bar tape. No, your levers. You you and I have our levers in different positions and that annoyed the hell out of me. Yeah. And but but those are the things that really do actually play on your mind once you’ve got used to a bike. feels great. So, get the position sorted. Yeah. All good. But then there is a subtle difference between them, right? And so, you can tailor your bike choice to the type of riding that you do. So, the harder you ride it, the faster you ride it, the better the air gets. Yeah. For cruising around on it, you know, like you look cool, but it’s probably not the best cruisy bike. Whereas the ultimate at slower speeds, particularly climbing, it does feel that little bit. And then the reality is that everyone probably does a little bit of everything, don’t they? And so really then you choose a bike based on what you think you want to do as opposed to the bike that you actually will use in that way. It’s almost like irrelevant knowing whether one thing’s technically best suited to one thing or the other cuz at the end of the day you just best off having the bike that you like the most. I honestly think that so all of those people that are, you know, on the fence about whether to buy this bike or that bike, I think the bike that your heart says buy Yeah. as opposed to your head is the one that you would ultimately be happier with. So, did you enjoy this experience or did you basically spend a lot of your time thinking, “Well, I just haven’t got my bike, but I’m only doing it to help Alex out.” Has it helped you in your sort of cycling journey, do you think? Broadened your experiences. I mean, it was interesting. Yeah, I found it interesting. It was really interesting, but I’m looking forward to having my bike back. Yeah, in a way, I kind of feel similar. So, we I was going to say it makes it feel like this whole thing was pointless, but I think that we’ve reached that conclusion is a good thing. I think so. And for most people, the reality of being in this situation is away from the world of YouTube. And in the real world, if you had a bike and you decided you want to change, well, you’re going to have to somehow sell your bike to fund getting a new one, at the end of the day, it’s just going to cost you quite a bit of money. So, a lot of people are going to go, you know what, I’ll just stick with what I got. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, but then equally if your heart falls for another one, why not? Just got to deal with it. Yeah, if you can if you can do it, it’s a hobby after all, isn’t it? Okay, there you go. I’m glad we’ve kind of come to a good conclusion on this. I have found it interesting nonetheless, and I guess we would be keen to hear from everybody else, right? Absolutely. Yeah, I thought we were going to have some great epiphany, Alex, from swapping bikes, but ultimately, no pun intended, again, we haven’t. But then I think there in lies in a really important point is that actually it’s about the bike that you love. Yeah, that’s a really good way to finish. Yeah, do get involved in the comment section cuz we would love to hear your thoughts on this subject cuz uh well, as Alex said, it keeps us awake at night. Right, we’re out of here. Enough bike chat for one video. See you later.