We've had a couple of sets of the new Shimano Ultegra Di2 come in to store so far, but today we received our Ultegra Di2 test bike! Yes it is garish, but it's not meant to show the bike off, it's meant to show off the great Shimano electronic shifting and that it definitely does! This bit of kit retails for approx. £1600 (you can get it from Corley Cycles for £1280) , which we believe will bring electronic gear shifting to a much wider audience.

With buttery smooth shifting that's also intelligent it's hard to see why electronic wont soon be the norm. It's worth it for the ever so satisfying robotic noises made by the front derailleur alone! The differences between the Ultegra Di2 and the Dura-Ace Di2 are very slight; Dura-Ace uses a 4 cable system where Ultegra uses 2 which makes the Dura-Ace version slightly quicker and the motor for the front mech is slightly bigger on the Ultegra version.

So, thinking about trying out the new standard in shifting? Come down and take it for a spin!

What else have we had in this week... Oh yes these beautiful Mavic Cosmic Carbone 80 tubular wheels!

This is Mavic's deepest rim yet and it looks stunning. With the "subtle" decals previously seen on the Mavic Ultimate wheelset you could be mistaken for first thinking "that's not very bling"... But you'd be oh so wrong...

They come with Mavic's own brand of tubulars (Yksion Griplink for the front, Yksion Powerlink for the rear), which have had some good feedback from our own team riders. These wheels have already been tested and recommended by the pros - Mavic wheels are used by Garmin, Liquigas and Omega Pharma Lotto.

Expect to see the Team Corley Cycles riders fighting over these in 2012!

Yours in sport,

Sarah

As usual the cyclocross riders were out in force last weekend (11th Dec). There was a great field at the National Trophy event in Bradford where our Jamie Newall competed in the senior event and Greg Simcock competed in the veteran event. As is always the case at the Bradford Peel Park 'cross race there was mud aplenty!

If you want a laugh watching a few of the spills you can see them here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rT0kNL-wV0I

Jamie managed 19th which considering the amount of mud and the field he was up against, I think was pretty good. Greg took 5th just ahead of Chris Young, who was topping the National Rankings! So very well done Gregory! (If you do watch the video you'll see Greg going over the handlebars at just after the minute mark)

Whilst all that mud was flying oop North, Nick Jones was taking overall victory in the Central Cyclocross League! He's managed 6 wins and 2 second places in the league where the best 6 results count towards the overall. Nick beat off stiff competition from Paul Robertson of sportstest.co.uk.

So all in all another great weekend of cyclocross action for the Team Corley Cycles riders! Well done all!

Your in sport,

Sarah

So there was some very shiny, very expensive cars going up and down the city centre on Saturday. As I and my colleagues had to work we didn't get the opportunity to go but hope that anyone that did make it had a great day out!

A couple of the Corley Cycles staff were due to man a stand up at CMK to help promote ourselves, Team MK and British Cycling. Mark Webber had agreed that when he found a few minutes spare he would come up and sign a few pictures for any interested public at the stand.

Due to circumstances beyond our control, the planned promotion at CMK last weekend had to be aborted. We had arranged for an easy-up to be setup on the Friday night and manned on Saturday from 7:30am. We were then informed by security on Friday night we could not do this. The Centre duty manage was called and he enforced this stance.

The small cordoned off area we were then given was totally unsuitable to do what we had planned and at 8am Saturday we had no choice but to abandon the project. So we at Corley Cycles apologise if we inconvenienced anyone and hope that everyone had a grand day watching and listening to the very fast cars.

Yours in sport,

Sarah