Storck Fascenario ‘F.3’ Platinum

My first week with an extraordinary new bike

A week ago I drove up from Prov­i­dence to meet with Husam, the own­er of ATA Cycle in Con­cord, MA, and pick up the bike. When I got there I still only sort of knew what to expect. We had decid­ed on the grup­po (SRAM Red eTap AXS 12 speed, fresh from the source), the frame (he had exact­ly one left in my size), and (if he could find anoth­er set), Light­weight Meilen­stein wheels. While we had talked gen­er­al­ly about the rest of the com­po­nents and trim­mings, I know Husam well enough to know how he likes to work. I’d find out soon enough what he felt would be best. We weren’t sure if the wheels he’d sourced would be there in time, but I’d kept Fri­day clear on my cal­en­dar so he said to just come up and we’d fig­ure some­thing out regard­less. So that’s what I did.

A little background

This moment has been a few years in the mak­ing. I met Husam about four years ago when I first had a fit­ting done. At the time all we did was adjust and adapt the bike I had. It was still a lit­tle tall up front, but after short­en­ing the stem and mak­ing a few oth­er adjust­ments, I can hon­est­ly say I felt bet­ter on the bike than ever. And that’s after 10 years of rac­ing (5 full-time) and hav­ing fits done by some pret­ty expe­ri­enced coach­es. I ride about 3,500–4,000 miles a year, with pret­ty reg­u­lar out­ings in the 65–100 mile range year-round. I don’t race any­more, but I do like the Tues­day Night Smack­down rides here in Prov­i­dence with a few hard hill jams and a sprint or two. A nice bal­ance to the longer, hilli­er out­ings in the West­ern part of the state. So Husam already knew me, my his­to­ry, and my rid­ing style and pref­er­ences pret­ty well.

Final­ly a few weeks ago the stars aligned, and it was time to vis­it the shop and pick up the where we’d left off.

Discovering the bike that would be right for me

All of this back­ground gen­er­al­ly points towards a lighter-weight rac­ing-ori­ent­ed frame. I’m com­fort­able with that geom­e­try, like the respon­sive­ness, and was hop­ing to take a pound or so off the total weight of my 10-year-old Trek Madone. It’s built up with Campy Cho­rus and Shamal Ultra wheels, so comes in at a respectably light 16 pounds. But I knew that 15 was attain­able with­out com­pro­mis­ing much on dura­bil­i­ty these days.

Know­ing me as he does, it didn’t take Husam long to point me towards the Stor­ck Fas­ce­nario Plat­inum. I’m a graph­ic and web design­er, so the mat­te car­bon aes­thet­ic cer­tain­ly appealed, and the com­bi­na­tion of geom­e­try, aero­dy­nam­ics, and weight lined up per­fect­ly with the ride qual­i­ty I want­ed. The wheels were admit­ted­ly a splurge (and had just shown up the pre­vi­ous after­noon), but it was clear Husam real­ly want­ed me to expe­ri­ence the com­bi­na­tion. So with a promise that if it wasn’t every­thing he made it out to be, he’d build me some­thing else‑I agreed.

A lovely first sight

When I walked into the shop, Husam pulled the bike out from a row along the wall. I’m pret­ty sure I made some kind of noise. The bike was stun­ning. After a bit of put­ter­ing around with ped­als, bot­tle cages, mov­ing over my Garmin mount, we had a weight: 14.06. Two pounds lighter than the Trek! Time to go for a ride.

Ride #1: Concord/Carlisle Express

Elapsed Time	Mov­ing Time	Dis­tance	Aver­age Speed	Max Speed	Ele­va­tion Gain	Calo­ries Burned
01:38:22 hours	01:34:25 hours	46.26 km	29.40 km/h	55.80 km/h	422.00 meters	965 kcal

Driz­zle, 63°F, Feels like 64°F, Humid­i­ty 95%, Wind 2mph from S — by 

This is a loop I found on Stra­va a few years ago, and do almost every time I vis­it the shop. Rolling fast stuff on Maple and East, some nice climb­ing on Nagog Hill. There was a bit of rain on and off, which at least gave me a sense of what brak­ing is like with the rim brake/carbon rim com­bi­na­tion. (It was sur­pris­ing­ly good. Like ‘caught me by sur­prise it grabbed so well’ kind of good). By the end of the ride I knew I need­ed to make a cou­ple of adjust­ments to the fit, and thank­ful­ly Andy was able to help me out when I got back to the shop. Not the fastest I’d ever done the loop, but notice­ably faster one some of the flats and steep­er climbs. While the ride was def­i­nite­ly a lit­tle less cushy than the Trek, even when I delib­er­ate­ly went for the rougher pave­ment it nev­er felt jarring.

Some tweaks: a lit­tle low­er on the sad­dle (how a slab of car­bon fiber from SMP could be that com­fort­able I don’t know, but it is), swap a spac­er to low­er the stem a bit, and scoot the levers down the curve of the drops a tiny bit. It already felt loads bet­ter. I drove home spend­ing far too much time look­ing up through the sun­roof at what was mount­ed on the roof rack.

Ride #2: Hot & Hilly, to Wickford the much longer way

Elapsed Time	Mov­ing Time	Dis­tance	Aver­age Speed	Max Speed	Ele­va­tion Gain	Calo­ries Burned
03:57:39 hours	03:52:09 hours	103.63 km	26.78 km/h	64.44 km/h	1,129.00 meters	2,050 kcal

First Fon­do on the new ride and OMFG this thing is amaz­ing! Clear, 81°F, Feels like 85°F, Humid­i­ty 74%, Wind 7mph from SSW — by 

On Sun­day it was fore­cast to be a high in the 90s, so the plan was to spend the after­noon at my par­ents’ pool. I set out ear­ly and took a long curv­ing loop around the state to hit as many hills as I could on the way through Sci­t­u­ate, Hope Val­ley, and Exeter on the way to meet up with my fam­i­ly in Wick­ford. About 65 miles and a bit under 4 hours, with about 3,700′ of climb­ing. It wasn’t the fastest pace, but it felt pret­ty effortless.

Seat posi­tion felt per­fect, and the bars felt clos­er. The shift­ing up and down on the chain­rings need­ed a tiny bit of fid­dling to find the right bal­ance between speed and pre­dictabil­i­ty (that was hard­er to test ini­tial­ly back at the shop). What struck me was that over the course of all dif­fer­ent road con­di­tions and gra­di­ents (from flat to over 10%), the road almost dis­ap­peared. It just felt so smooth and nat­ur­al, it was like I’d been rid­ing the bike for years.

After a nice relax­ing after­noon in the pool, a few more adjust­ments were in order. Swapped one more spac­er to low­er the stem a tad more. Scoot­ed the levers a tiny bit fur­ther down the drops to get the hoods a bit flat­ter. I spend a lot of time on the cor­ners and hoods, and I like a more neu­tral feel when climb­ing out of the sad­dle there. Hav­ing the lever body be pret­ty hor­i­zon­tal felt a lot bet­ter than when they were angled up a bit more. Def­i­nite­ly a per­son­al pref­er­ence thing, but once I moved them, it just felt right to me.

Ride #3: An easy spin to road test the adjustments

Elapsed Time	Mov­ing Time	Dis­tance	Aver­age Speed	Max Speed	Ele­va­tion Gain	Calo­ries Burned
01:16:50 hours	01:12:59 hours	33.90 km	27.87 km/h	51.84 km/h	170.00 meters	596 kcal

Humid and Part­ly Cloudy, 92°F, Feels like 104°F, Humid­i­ty 58%, Wind 9mph from SW — by 

All the adjust­ments real­ly came togeth­er: the bike was real­ly start­ing to feel nat­ur­al. Thank­ful­ly I didn’t feel too tired from the day before, but I took it easy regard­less. I had plans for Tues­day night and want­ed to be fresh for them.

Ride #4: An extended Smackdown loop and a new PR

Elapsed Time	Mov­ing Time	Dis­tance	Aver­age Speed	Max Speed	Ele­va­tion Gain	Calo­ries Burned
01:30:40 hours	01:30:40 hours	47.12 km	31.18 km/h	61.20 km/h	370.00 meters	944 kcal

Clear, 90°F, Feels like 92°F, Humid­i­ty 43%, Wind 6mph from W — by 

This was the day to real­ly see how fast the bike was. This is a loop that includes 3 longer inclines and two short, steep ones, cov­er­ing most of the Tues­day Night Smack­down loop with an added trip up Rocky Hill, so you get both the long grind and the short steep ver­sions. I kept the pace up and real­ly worked the gears to see if my adjust­ments had paid off. They cer­tain­ly did, and it all added up to best­ing my pre­vi­ous record on that loop by 1:19 with­out ever real­ly bury­ing myself too bad­ly. It cer­tain­ly set­tled the ques­tion ‘Is it fast?’ with a resound­ing affirmative.

Ride #5: Another easy spin, a little bit softer now

Elapsed Time	Mov­ing Time	Dis­tance	Aver­age Speed	Max Speed	Ele­va­tion Gain	Calo­ries Burned
01:14:11 hours	01:11:45 hours	33.82 km	28.28 km/h	50.40 km/h	179.00 meters	609 kcal

Swapped out the 700x25s for 28s. Seems good?! A lit­tle smoother, still felt super fast out of the cor­ners Humid, 87°F, Feels like 95°F, Humid­i­ty 62%, Wind 7mph from SW — by 

When I picked up the bike it was wear­ing a set of Vit­to­ria Cor­so Graphene 700x25s (at 90psi). I’ve rid­den Con­ti­nen­tal 4000s for the past bunch of years, and they’ve always been… fine. The Vit­to­rias felt pret­ty nice, but so many things were dif­fer­ent with the new bike it was hard to real­ly iso­late that. But I knew that I want­ed to try 28s (get some here) with a lit­tle low­er pres­sure, so I ordered a set and mount­ed them up, pumped to 80psi. I’ve been seek­ing out all of the area’s ‘best’ rough patch­es of pave­ment all along, and while the bike felt real­ly pret­ty sol­id on the 25s, I do think the 28s are a bit smoother, and the bike still feels real­ly plant­ed when cor­ner­ing, and accel­er­ates like a rock­et out of the bends. So I’ll keep them on for a while at least.

They match up real­ly nice­ly with the wider rims on the Light­weight Meilen­stein 24s, so togeth­er they do make for a real­ly mod­ern com­bi­na­tion. For some­one who only gave up on 23’s at 110psi a few years ago, I think I’m mak­ing some big steps.

All in all, this week has been a joy. The bike itself is phe­nom­e­nal, and with every tweak and adjust­ment it has got­ten bet­ter and bet­ter-more than that, it’s become mould­ed to my rid­ing style and posi­tion bet­ter than any­thing I’ve ever expe­ri­enced. I can’t wait to see what miles next week brings.

[I wrote this for the shop site as a con­tributed review]

Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished at https://www.atacycle.com on July 4, 2020.