Kuota K-Factor Road Bike: We are big fans of the Kuota K-Factor. It looks amazing and the ride is inspiring. Born as a triathlon bike the folks at Kuota are now offering this frame as a road bike build. This is a great opportunity to get a road bike that can later be used for triathlon (the fastest growing cycling related sport). This is just the bike to get you going on the road and even into tri. For starters, tri bikes have slightly steeper seat tubes to place the rider further over the cranks than a road bike. This allows the rider to use the larger quad muscles over the smaller calf muscles. Tri bikes also take advantage of aero-shaped tubing to slice through the air with less resistance. Now take those attributes and apply them to a road bike format. What you get is a comfortable quick bike that likes to shoot down the road. Tri frames in general have slightly shorter top tubes to put the pilot in a comfortable position when using aerobars. The difference in most cases is 1-1.5cm. A proper fit is easily obtained by refrencing the size chart and the usual minor tweaks of saddle position and/or stem. The generous head tube size of the K-Factor allows this bike to be utilized in many different formats. Start with the road build and add an aero bar clip-on and you are set to go! If you decide that triathlon is for you then you can replace the road handlebar with a full blown tri bar and go all out. Without getting too technical, it is easier to transform a tri bike into a road bike than a road bike into a tri bike. One of the key factors is the placement of the wheel under the rider. On a road bike geometry the rear wheel may be too far back and will alter the ride quality when the riders weight is placed on an aerobar extension. With too much weight coming off of the rear wheel the bike handling will become unbalanced and suffer.
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