The holidays are a time to celebrate with friends and family, look back on the year's accomplishments, and give thanks for everything we have. But they're also an excellent excuse to stock up on triathlon gear for next season! In this 12-part series we'll highlight and recommend some of the best triathlon gear that will get you to the finish line faster in your next race.
When it comes to seatpost upgrades for your road bike, we're admittedly biased. The Redshift Dual-Position Seatpost is the only post on the market that lets you optimize your aero position on the road bike without giving up your normal road position. So, as we did with the clip-on aerobars, we're going to skip the recommendations in this post and tell you a few things that you may not have known about our seatpost:
Rigorous Testing: Throughout the development process, the seatpost was subjected to intense fatigue and functional testing, both internally and with independent testing labs. To ensure that we would be able to meet the rigorous European standard for road bike testing (CEN 14781), we designed and built our own test fixture, which allowed us to test at every design iteration. You can see the test fixture in action here:
Manufacturing and Assembly: Over 80% of the seatpost parts are made in the USA and every single post is assembled by hand in our small office in Philadelphia. This allows us to maintain tight control over the process and make continuous quality and efficiency improvements.
Springs!: Designing the seatpost mechanism to feel secure yet still be easy to switch required many iterations. In the end, we had to develop a custom spring assembly that can deliver over 75 lbs of spring force in a tiny amount of space. The spring-detent package is assembled using a special fixture that pre-loads the mechanism before pressing in the shafts.
Advanced Features: The seatpost has a special "eccentric" shaft at the front that allows you to tilt the nose of the saddle further down when it's brought to the forward position. By loosening the set screw and rotating the eccentric shaft, you subtly change the geometry of the 4-bar linkage and add up to 5 additional degrees of nose-down saddle tilt when in the forward position. This adjustment can dramatically reduce saddle discomfort related to the rotation of your torso when dropping down into the aero position.
Want to know more? You can find technical specifications and more here.