To be clear, this bike is stupid and it shouldn’t exist. And that’s precisely why I love it.

This is the first road bike I ever bought. A 2017 Specialized Allez E5 Sport. It weighed 22lb with stock parts and it cost me $700 new, an amount of money I found to be positively eye-watering on my then-student budget. I bought it, I raced it between lights, I ripped descents on beautiful days with friends... It became my favourite possession.

And yet, there was always one nagging thought in the back of my head, ‘How fast can you make an entry level bike go?’ For years, I filed the thought under ‘interesting but unrealistic’ and mostly forgot about it. But then last year I got into racing and the thought kept coming back until eventually I caved and decided to explore precisely how fast you can make an entry level frame go.

The result is this highly-cursed build. Ladies and gentlemen, my race bike for the 2022 season, The Allezthos.

Here’s a quick rundown of the upgrades.

Wheels: Enve SES 4.5s
Groupset: SRAM Red eTap AXS
Brakes: SRAM Red Rim Brakes
Handlebar/Stem: Roval Alpinist Cockpit
Seatpost: Roval Alpinist
Saddle: Sworks Power Mirror
Pedals: Dura Ace
Final weight: 17.7lb

This bike is a batshit, barrel of laughs. At first, I was worried that the result would be less than the sum of its parts, but after a couple of laps of the Bear Mountain course with Scott and Alvaro, those worries were put to bed. This thing rips. The alloy frame has married with the carbon components to create something that feels snappy but compliant. You get all the responsiveness of carbon cranks, handlebars and a seatpost but the cheap aluminum smooths out a lot of the road chatter. It feels like nothing you’ve ever ridden because it’s unlike anything a manufacturer in their right mind would build.

Basically, it’s a fantastic bike. At the same time, I cannot recommend that you do this in good conscience. It looks chaotic, it is financially indefensible and it’s not even any faster than an equivalent new bike. Besides, it exists now, so you don’t have to do it.

But, to me, it all makes sense for three reasons. One, I said I would do it and you have to commit to the bit. Two, it’s a great bike for park racing (the frame would be easy to replace.) Lastly, I’m fundamentally a sentimental guy. I instill a lot of meaning into things that entered my life at just the right time. My first road bike is one of those objects and there’s something conceptually satisfying about proving that you could only ride one bike frame for your entire cycling life, upgrading it bit by bit.

There are plenty of videos out there that give very well-researched and well-reasoned explanations about why you shouldn’t upgrade an entry level bike. They all boil down to the same basic point: A complete, new bike is a package deal of components, so upgrading and entry frame piecemeal will always be more expensive than buying a slightly better bike. They’re probably right, but what fun is that? Wouldn’t you rather have a goofy build with externally routed brake cables and beep boop shifting? Wouldn’t the joy that comes from cracking an opponent be ever-so-slightly heightened in the knowledge that you did it on a bike that still has the weird little valve things that are used for routing your old Claris groupy?

This isn’t a bike for carefully laid out tactics, it’s a bike for ill-conceived breakaways and racing between lights until you taste metal and want to barf. It’s for ripping descents on beautiful days with your friends. It’s a bike for doing stupid things on because it is itself an intensely stupid object. We practice a sport that a lot of us take very seriously, that’s a good thing, but it can also lead us to lose sight of the bigger picture. What better reminder is there that cycling is for fun than reviving the first bike that made you go “wow, this is fast”?

I guess what I’m saying is, there are some bikes you buy with your head, but the Allezthos was built with my whole heart.