Collyn is a distance rider. She’s game for 8, 10 or 24 hour endurance rides and having done some massive miles, she knows what she wants from her bicycles – from both a performance perspective and design-wise.

Collyn had recently decided to retire her aluminium cross bike and was after a new steel cyclocross bike which she could use for big miles, a bit of racing, and the option to ride off-road on everything from rocky jeep track to technical muddy single track. On long rides, comfort counts above all else, and for this, a steel bicycle is king.

We used Columbus Life tubing. Columbus Life is ideal for a cyclocross bike because it’s light enough, but also extremely strong for the kind of terrain and vigorous riding the cyclocross style demands. Collyn wanted simple, clean lines so I built all the cabling to run internally. This met her design aspirations, and at the same time it has a functional benefit of keeping mud off the cabling.  To help with the performance on descending off-road routes Collyn also wanted to upgrade from her cantilever brakes to disc brakes. For this we selected TRP Spyre disc brakes and Kinesis Crosslight CX disc wheels.

In Collyn’s own words, the bike is a “collection of memories, courage, ambition, and joy, all wrapped up into this machine of steel and rubber” and importantly “it rides like heaven”. Now that in itself fills me with joy.

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