Ok, no entirely new anymore, I’ve had it about 2 weeks now. It’s a Orbea Terra M30 Team 1x.
I’m not new to gravelbiking, I used to own a Cannondale Topstone 105, bought in 2019. All in all an incredibly terrible bike. It was ok for the first roughly 400 km and after that it was sheer missery. Worst bike I ever owned. After spending a lot of money to have it fully serviced only to break down AGAIN within days during a weekend trip to the Ardennes I couldn’t take it anymore and ditched the bike.
A long search for a replacement followed. I want to use the bike first and foremost for commuting. Luckily I can ride to work via either perfect cycling paths, forest lanes or even flowy single tracks. So I wanted a fast, nimble bike, with not so much focus on longer, loaded holiday trips. Being tall the longlist quickly grew shorter. In the end I could either go for a checkpoint ALR5 or try to find an Orbea to test.
The checkpoint was fine, great bike even. I loved the mounts for a frame bag, but wasn’t a big fan of the colors and the cockpit. It was also not as nimble as I’d hoped. Then I found a Terra in XXL. The testride had me convinced within 2 minutes. Did a bikefit and bought the bike.
On the first ride the bike was sooo good it actually made me angry. Angry I had missed out on this much fun for so long on that POS Topstone. It’s fast, really fast (despite the heavy stock wheels), it’s very nimble (but not unstable), it’s fantastically comfortable and it seems to be glued to the ground. Swapping the stock Terrano Drys for my personal favorites (Bontrager GR2, I know the gr1 is disliked, but the gr2’s are more than perfect for me) made it even better. So. Much. Grip. You can really throw the bike around on the single tracks and harass the mountainbikers.
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Ok, no entirely new anymore, I’ve had it about 2 weeks now. It’s a Orbea Terra M30 Team 1x.
I’m not new to gravelbiking, I used to own a Cannondale Topstone 105, bought in 2019. All in all an incredibly terrible bike. It was ok for the first roughly 400 km and after that it was sheer missery. Worst bike I ever owned. After spending a lot of money to have it fully serviced only to break down AGAIN within days during a weekend trip to the Ardennes I couldn’t take it anymore and ditched the bike.
A long search for a replacement followed. I want to use the bike first and foremost for commuting. Luckily I can ride to work via either perfect cycling paths, forest lanes or even flowy single tracks. So I wanted a fast, nimble bike, with not so much focus on longer, loaded holiday trips. Being tall the longlist quickly grew shorter. In the end I could either go for a checkpoint ALR5 or try to find an Orbea to test.
The checkpoint was fine, great bike even. I loved the mounts for a frame bag, but wasn’t a big fan of the colors and the cockpit. It was also not as nimble as I’d hoped. Then I found a Terra in XXL. The testride had me convinced within 2 minutes. Did a bikefit and bought the bike.
On the first ride the bike was sooo good it actually made me angry. Angry I had missed out on this much fun for so long on that POS Topstone. It’s fast, really fast (despite the heavy stock wheels), it’s very nimble (but not unstable), it’s fantastically comfortable and it seems to be glued to the ground. Swapping the stock Terrano Drys for my personal favorites (Bontrager GR2, I know the gr1 is disliked, but the gr2’s are more than perfect for me) made it even better. So. Much. Grip. You can really throw the bike around on the single tracks and harass the mountainbikers.