Whyte designer Ian Alexander runs us through his CX prototype bike ahead of the 3 Peaks Cyclo-Cross, an annual 61km race with 1,534m of ascent in the Yorkshire Dales, on Sunday.

It’s based on the recently-released Saxon Cross and is designed to combat all the hurdles the 3 Peaks throws at those who attempt to tame it. Just take a look at this video…

Over to Ian…

Just over a year ago I was trying to make my mind up as to what bike I should ride the 3 Peaks Cyclo-Cross on. It was actually a difficult thing to nail down. You could still run flat bars if you wanted, but, let’s face it, that’s not a CX bike.

But while I wanted to respect the long history of the race with a traditional looking CX bike, I wanted some technology in there as well, like disc brakes, and geometry that was more off-road than pure road. Despite a lot of searching around, there was nothing readily available that would let me build the bike I was riding in my head.

In the end, the 2010 3 Peaks didn’t happen for me at all, as family events intervened. But at about the same time we got the nod to develop the Whyte CX bike for 2012 production. I settled on a design and the first prototype frames arrived not long before Christmas which was lucky, as for the following month snow sat on the ground and a load of miles got put on the prototypes that otherwise probably would have been put on other projects.

Confidence and control were the two key objectives of the Whyte geometry on these bikes, and we achieved that with longer and slacker frame geometry, wide handlebars and short stems. The combined effect really produced a step up in performance when properly off road. Other mountain bike design cues are the continuous outer cable runs (top tube, of course), front facing slot in the seat tube clamp, and post mount disc brake tabs on the forks and the rear dropouts. Clean, tidy and quick to set-up.

The Race bike and the T bike I’m taking to Helwith Bridge are the early iterations of the prototypes. They spawned the Kings Cross, Charring Cross and Saxon Cross models launched in July. So to bring the project full circle, the 2011 3Peaks will be the final test for the prototypes. We also have Dave Haygarth, who races in the Wheelbase team, very kindly running the third prototype Whyte. Dave’s a top ten finisher, and has an unbroken run at the 3 Peaks since 1995.

Whyte were very fortunate to secure a set of the not-yet-released Hope Hydraulic disc brake converters to try out which means I should be hoping for rain and wet conditions to maximize any advantage these fantastic brakes are going to liberate.

Wheels and tyres are always the subject of a lot of 3Peaks discussion, and I’ve been approaching this from an MTB perspective as well. Full UST 29er MTB wheels with standard Maxxis Locust CX tyres, and a bottle of Latex per tyre, have so far proved really reliable down to just 45psi.

But for the Peaks I’m hoping this setup will prove reliable and light with tubeless running at 65 psi, hopefully mitigating the risk of pinch flats on the notorious rocky stretches; I’m hoping so anyway. The big benefit has also been the wide rim width of the 29er MTB rims meaning much less tyre roll and thus better cornering stability thanks to the 21mm rim width on the 33mm tyres.

Groupset is Sram; thanks to some cross-compatibility between their road and MTB groups I’ll run 2×10 XX cranks (42/28) and an 11-36 cassette with a short cage XO rear mech. I have got the new Shimano CX-70 top pull front mech though, as it negates the use of one of those pesky rollers on the frame. A short 70mm Whyte stem, and the widest possible FSA shallow drop alloy bars complete the cockpit.

So there we are, I think I’ve got it covered but I’ll find out at the 3 Peaks on Sunday afternoon if it’s back to the drawing board on not…

Thanks to Dave Haygarth. Check out his superb 3Peaks blog – www.3pcx.blogspot.com
Thanks to Alan at Hope for the latest Hope Tech CX brakes – www.hopetech.co.uk