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Will one of these new road bike releases be the best road bike of 2026? Cube releases its 2026 road bike and gravel bike range, we take a look at whether they're the best value bikes for 2026. Scott releases a new 2026 Addict endurance road bike, Pinarello launches more affordable road bikes and lots more.
Jamie also takes a look at the equipment that Geraint Thomas used for his last ever race at the 2025 Tour of Britain and runs you through his latest project - A SEKA Spear road bike.
Jamie also takes a look at the equipment that Geraint Thomas used for his last ever race at the 2025 Tour of Britain and runs you through his latest project - A SEKA Spear road bike.
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00:00In this episode we take a look at G's rather special setup for his last ever race as a
00:06professional cyclist. Cube might have just released the best value bikes of 2026. Scott
00:13have just made their road bike more comfortable and Pinarello have made their road bike more
00:18affordable. Right where to start? How about with this because I've got a new toy. So this
00:25is a Sika Spear. This is China's answer to the Specialized Tarmac SL8 and it's basically
00:31a do it all all rounder. It's a lightweight and aero bike and well I'm going to be building it
00:38up
00:38and seeing how it performs. Not only does it come with some pretty big claims but it also comes with
00:44an in-house all-in-one one-piece cockpit integrated of course. It's called a Rapier and I've gone for
00:51it in a 375mm width. It's got six degrees of flare which is suitably modern and a 120mm stem. I'm
00:57pretty impressed with the rest of the frame as well. It is nicely done and as you can see I've
01:01gone for it in one of their more subtle paint jobs. I'm joking of course but they have done a
01:07nice job
01:07of it and here we've got a wind eye. That's quite a unique feature and yeah it's just all the
01:14accessories that have come with it are really nice and it's also like they've done a nice job. These
01:19threads are nice and clean. They've obviously masked off where the bottom bracket is going to go
01:24and the idea with this frame is that I'm going to build it up and I'm thinking I'm going to
01:30do it
01:30with components exclusively from the far east and then put it up against a dream build of western
01:37components and seeing if it's lacking behind in any areas, where it's ahead in any areas and where it's
01:45on a par in other areas. So let me know in the comments what you think I should put on
01:50it. Maybe
01:51some elite wheels, maybe some fast sports, maybe some Kraftworks, Alili cranks, maybe they even look
01:56good on it. You name it we'll try and get it in and see what we can do and if
02:01you could also hit
02:02subscribe then that'll really help us out because 80% of you still aren't subscribed so click it now
02:08and you won't miss me building this up. Right moving swiftly on and by the time this video goes
02:14live hopefully Garen Thomas will have very almost completed his final ever bike race. I never thought
02:22I'd see the day and I've got my fingers really tightly crossed that he does actually finish this
02:27one but we can we can only hope. Now on his final trip around the UK he has got a
02:34pretty tricked out
02:35setup. So here's his Pinarello Dogma F, he's obviously got a custom livery for this race and
02:42as we all know the Welsh have probably got the best flag in the world and he's used the dragon
02:47absolutely everywhere. It's on the head tube of the bike, it's on his shoes, it's on, it's even on his
02:54helmet a bit. He's also got these gold sunnies, they're sun gods. Let me know what you think of
03:01them down below. I'm a little bit torn on whether someone who isn't Olympic road champion should be
03:08wearing gold glasses on the road but if anyone can get away with it it's probably G. I just think
03:15there's all these faces, all the crowds are holding up these faces and they've all got his white glasses
03:21on. They've been a staple throughout his career and now his final race and he's chucked the white ones
03:27in a hedge. Got a new set of gold ones. Not sure, maybe he should have stuck with the white
03:32ones.
03:33As for his bike, well it's a Dogma F. I was slightly surprised to see that he's using Continental's GP5000
03:40STR TT tyres because as we know the British roads are not always the most forgiving. Plenty of potholes
03:47for them to contend with and a lot of parked cars. That's one thing that I have noticed from watching
03:52the
03:52coverage. As for the rest of his setup, Shimano wheels, Dura-Ace Di2 as he's used for years and
04:00years and years. And then his shoes, I'm a big fan of them, they're the Kwok M3 Air Pros, also
04:07with the
04:07dragon on the side of them. I reckon I'd have them, they're nice. And then his helmet, that's a cask
04:13Elemento and again it's got that sort of dragon scale pattern on it. And the whole Linneos team
04:20is in custom kit. That's also got a Welsh dragon on it. Let me know what you think of any
04:25of that
04:25down in the comments below. Now the next thing I want to talk about is AI because well it's literally
04:32everywhere and now it's coming to training too. So you might have seen in a previous video that
04:38I've been using Relevate. Now it's designed for both indoor and outdoor training. Now I first came
04:44across this app because I was looking for one that would allow me to track my rides on my phone,
04:49but not only that but I also wanted to see where my friends are whilst we were doing a bikepacking
04:55trip across France. So I wanted to see where they'd all got to because we were all going different
05:00speeds, we'd all stop at different cafes and whatever. Anyway, they do indoor stuff too and
05:06they've just released this AI generated workouts and training plans. Now that means that you can use
05:13your standard workout design and planning tools but with AI generated suggestions as your starting
05:20point. Now I've been having a play with it and I really do think that it could save people quite
05:25a lot of time and not only that quite a lot of money. So my question to you is would
05:32you use
05:33an AI training plan? Let me know down below. Oh and I've also just found out that you can take
05:40segments from outdoor rides and you can use them in the app on the turbo. So I'll be trying that
05:47out
05:47now that the weather has taken a turn for the worse. Now I realise that's been quite a whistle
05:52stop tour so if you want to find anything else out for Elevate then we'll pop a link to the
05:56app
05:57down in the description. The next thing I want to cover is what might be the best value bikes of
06:042026.
06:05Now I can say that with some confidence because Cube arguably released the best value bikes of 2025
06:13and they've just dumped all of their new bikes on their website for the 2026 product year. And yes,
06:19I remember in last month's edition of Tech of the Month I promised you better valued bikes. So here we
06:25go. Let's take a look at their range. So I've got the press release here. It definitely seems like they've
06:31released every kind of bike under the sun. There's hybrid bikes, mountain bikes, gravel bikes,
06:37oh this one looks good. New Road C62 SLT. What's that? Full SRAM Red Explore. If you want to see
06:45how I
06:45found that groupset on the road, it's a gravel groupset but we had a road bike with it on, then
06:50click the card
06:51up there. That one's £6,299. How about this one though? New Road SLX. It's got Shimano GRX on it.
07:00£1,799.
07:02Ah, but this is when things get serious. C68, so that's the one like Binion Gamay and Intermarche
07:08would use in the mountains. This has got to be the one that I'd go for. The Attain C62 SLT.
07:14It's, so it's got the full carbon frame and fork. It's then got Shimano Ultegra Di2, the 12 speed.
07:22It's got a 5034 tooth chain rings at the front, 1134 tooth cassette at the back. It's £3,099.
07:29Actually, I'm going to look up what the RRP of Shimano Ultegra, RRP £2,399.
07:38This bike is £3,099. So basically what you're doing is you're buying a groupset for £2,399 and then
07:48for an extra £700 you get an entire carbon frame, carbon fork, carbon bar, carbon seat post, saddle.
07:57It's got Newman carbon wheels on it. It's got Newman Advanced A50 wheels. People say bikes are getting
08:02more and more expensive. I think already we've probably found the best value bike of 2026.
08:08The other good news is that we should have at least some of those bikes coming in for review
08:13and for some videos shortly. So make sure you subscribe to that. Just another reason to subscribe.
08:20Right, more new bikes coming up. But first, a short inslude on how to protect yourself and your bikes
08:26from potential financial mishap. Whether you ride road bikes, gravel bikes, touring bikes, hybrid bikes,
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09:00loss or accidental damage. Having anything bad happen to your pride and joy is always painful,
09:06but with an insurance policy you can at least mitigate some of that heartache by knowing that
09:12someone has your back. If you'd like to check them out then there's a link down below and there's also
09:16details of a discount available on their website.
09:23Right, more new bikes and so Pinarello and Scott have also been jumping on the September release
09:31bandwagon. Seems a slightly odd time of year to release new road bikes, but hey we're all here for
09:37it. So let's take a closer look. Pinarello F-Series first, and I'm not sure I need to say a
09:42whole heap about it,
09:43because it does look very similar to the flagship Dogma F. Now this shouldn't come as much of a
09:51surprise. The F-Series has always been the mid-tier option just below the Dogma F, and it basically
09:58aims to bring all that racing pedigree to more people at a more affordable price point. That's how
10:06Pinarello tell it anyway. The F-Series has been about since 2023, and before that you might recall
10:13that it was called the Prince. So this new bike, well it does look mighty similar to the Dogma F.
10:19It is in fact 100 grams heavier, so not a whole heap, and it is a lot cheaper. There's currently
10:26five bikes in the range, ranging from the F1, that's the cheapest one. Don't know how they've got
10:31away with the copyright on that. I feel like F1 would be coming down on them quite hard.
10:37And then there's five bikes up to the F9, which is the highest spec one, and obviously it's different
10:44components across them. Now we've had a first ride on the F7, which comes with Ultegra ZI2,
10:51and our first ride review is now live on the Cycling Weekly website. Spoiler alert though,
10:56given, well I say spoiler, given that it's a fairly tried and tested recipe, it won't come as much of
11:02a surprise that the bike was very good. So if you want to read more about it, link down there.
11:08And then we've got that Scott. Now I know that something with comfort in its name is sometimes
11:14slightly hard to get excited about, but bear with us because this one actually does look like it might
11:20be a really good bike for lots of people. Now both me and Sam did get to ride the the
11:26race
11:26orientated addict that of course released earlier this year, and we both really loved it actually.
11:32It's stupidly light, the handling's great. The only thing is it is unapologetically a race bike.
11:38The position is quite aggressive and basically it was also surprisingly better value than actually
11:45most things from Specialized and Trek as well. That made it a big appeal. But anyway, it's got quite
11:51an aggressive position. This new bike basically aims to take all the good bits of that addict
11:57and update their addict comfort with a slightly more relaxed geometry.
12:03Now, according to the press release, the new model is supposedly 25% more compliant
12:10at the rear end than the race focused model and 50% more compliant than the outgoing model. Now,
12:17no doubt that is helped by this sort of half there, half not there seat post, but still,
12:23that's a hell of a lot. It's also got 38 millimetres of tyre clearance. Pretty sure that basically makes
12:30it an all road bike, doesn't it? And then the other thing that's different with this one is obviously
12:34it's got more relaxed geometry. So that basically boils down to it's got a much taller head tube,
12:40which will hopefully allow more people to get comfortable or find a comfortable position without running
12:46a load of, let's be honest, ugly spacers under the stem. I'm reading here that it is a little bit
12:53heavier than the race focused model, but I mean, that's still pretty darn light for a disc brake road
12:59bike in 2025. And there's too many models to go through now, but we do have some in the post,
13:08so we should be able to get one in the future. Right. Let us know your favourite bit of bike
13:13tech that
13:13we've covered today in the comments below. Let us know anything that you think we've missed and we
13:18should have covered. As always, if you liked this video, then please give it a like, subscribe to the
13:23channel for lots more bike stuff, and we'll see you next time.
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