Newly re-crowned US National Cyclocross Champion Katie Compton won her eleventh title this month in Austin on a bike she helped develop over the course of her two-year relationship with Trek.
Continuing our annual tradition of looking at Compton's winning bike, we grabbed an exclusive look at her 2015 Trek Boone 9 disc brake bike, fresh off her victory in Austin, with a half lap of the Zilker Park course's mud still coating the tires and pedals (no recycled photos here, see her Trek Boone from 2014 Nationals and Trek Crockett from 2013 Nationals for past bike photos).
We also chatted with husband Mark Legg-Compton about Compton's setup including pedal choices and the chain drop issues she face earlier in the season. See more of our ever-growing 2015 National Championship bike profiles here.
We could probably geek out with Legg-Compton about pedals for hours, and we did for a few minutes after Compton’s win in Austin. Although the bike Compton finished on featured what looks to be older M970 XTR SPD pedals, Legg-Compton says that his pedal of choice is the M780 XT pedal, not the M9000/M980 XTR pedals (which are identical), or the machined-down prototypes we’ve seen Sven Nys and Marianne Vos use on their bikes.
“Were running XTs because they have better clearance [than XTR],” Legg-Compton told Cyclocross Magazine. “The new XT pedals are a great pedal, like last year’s XTR but have better clearance and a little better platform and [are a] whole lot cheaper.”
When asked why the Shimano-sponsored athlete would care about cost, Legg-Compton surprisingly revealed that riders are limited in their component choices. “We buy XT pedals. We have the prototypes, and we have the XTRs and we’ll run those but for mud conditions I’ve found the XTs are a little better. If you’re gonna have problems with the XTs you’ll have problems with anything.”
At Austin, Legg-Compton admitted to using a “mix of XTR and XT” because he didn’t have enough of the XT at the time, which explains the older M970 XTR pedal we observed under the mud.
Katie Compton used M970 pedals on the bike she finished on, but husband Mark Legg-Compton says their favorite pedal is the M780 XT pedal. They didn’t have enough of them at Nationals and had a mix of pedals on the three bikes. © Cyclocross Magazine
