1,000 Colombian gravel KMs in 3 days: Laurens ten Dam's Transcordilleras-winning bike
 

Watch interview with Ben Delaney - way too funny
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClSgmKXdbJo

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...53fcc4b5_h.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...b46f5776_h.jpg

Dropbar MTBs are so hot right now. I even took mine out of storage and started riding and racing them again.

Some nice pics here too:

https://www.bikeradar.com/features/p...epic-world-cup

This helps put things in perspective, esp. what the front runners of this race had accomplished:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zJglYYazac

There's been a good drop bar thread over on the TrainerRoad forum for a few months now and we've talked about this exact setup before he got around to it. I really tried to talk myself into building the Epic World Cup(as above) when I was looking at building up my Epic HT Drop Bar. I couldn't justify such a niche build, especially as the Epic WC frame weighs more than my Epic Evo... But with that said, if I were building towards a real Tour Divide run, I don't know that I'd look past the little extra comfort.

Epic for real.

This is definitely a cool bike and LTD is a cool guy. I’ve pretty much scratched my itch for more aero and more hand positions using inner bar ends on flat bars.

As he says, drop bars are a personal preference. I wonder if this set-up really provides anything beyond the more standard flat bars plus aero extensions.

He doesn’t have a dropper. I wonder where his weight is when descending vs. flat bars.