Gravel Culture: The Service Course (TSC)
Posted By Gravel Union
On 3 March 2020
THE SERVICE COURSE - ISEN Workshop All Season Gravel
What if you’re a super keen gravel rider and you find yourself working (or travelling) away from home with your bike, but you need a gravel ride. When you need a gravel ride it’s almost like needing caffeine or sleep (or a cold beer on a Friday night) – it’s practically a medical emergency if you it! And then, maybe even worse, what happens if you’re in a new town and you don’t know where the best gravel riding is?
Previously, whilst you might have had some success with trawling through the web to find some route suggestions, the chances of you being able to find a decent quality gravel hire-bike were slim. But now, if you’re fortunate enough to be visiting Girona (Spain) or Oslo (Norway) you are in luck – The Service Course have opened shops in each of these locations and have high-end hire bikes (including some gravel bikes) and run regular shop rides to show you the best of the area.
We spotted the stunning ISEN All Season Gravel on The Service Course website and got in touch with them to find out more about the bike, their locations and the amazing gravel riding they have practically on their doorstep. Tristan Cardew filled us in with the details.
About The Service Course
The Service Course (TSC) was founded in 2016 by retired professional cyclist Christian Meier and his wife, Amber, with its original location in Girona, Spain. Guided by a clear vision from Christian’s years in the Grand Tour peloton, The Service Course offers the best of what he encountered while immersed in professional cycling. Offering a personalised travel experience, custom bike rental, high-end retail and of course beautiful bike builds, TSC aims to deliver a one-to-one service for all its guests. In November 2019 we opened our second location, The Service Course Oslo, in Norway, and in January 2020 we opened our third location, The Service Course Wilmslow, outside of Manchester in the United Kingdom.
Over the past three years, The Service Course has grown to deliver a stronger focus on gravel – we run Gravel Tours in Girona and Oslo, showcasing both cities’ vast array of incredible gravel riding, four one-day gravel events per year in Girona called The Gravel Bonanza, and have expanded our gravel rental fleet to include bikes from Belle Cycles, OPEN Cycle, and now ISEN Workshop. All our gravel bikes are fitted with Shimano GRX Di2 or XT Di2 groupsets, wheels from ENVE Composites or Mavic, and build kits by ENVE or Shimano.
About ISEN Workshop
ISEN Workshop are a London-based, boutique frame building workshop run by the team of frame builders Caren Hartley and Matt McDonough. Caren and Matt build and paint every frame by hand, and have a keen interest in all-weather, bike packing, gravel and off-road bikes. ISEN offer completely custom frame builds along with stock geometry options and allow for total customization of all their frames. Carbon integrated seat posts, stainless steel upgrades, solid silver head tube badges and additional rack and bidon mounts are just a few examples. We chose to team up with ISEN for their love and knowledge of steel and why it works so perfectly for gravel bikes – a philosophy we embrace at TSC. The beauty of working directly with frame builders is that we can take customer desires, aims and preferences for their new frame and bring something truly unique to life. We’re also proud to be working alongside one of the world’s leading female frame builders.
About this ISEN All Season Gravel
This ISEN All Season is the quintessential example of what ISEN do so well; it has a steel main frame with a carbon seat tube, Columbus carbon fork with 12mm through axel and tapered steerer, internal cable routing, fender mounts, and tire clearance for up to 40mm tires. It fits both 700c or 650b wheels. This frame is painted in one of ISEN’s 5 stock paint schemes called #sikcandyfadez. It is a size 52.
We fitted a Shimano GRX Di2 groupset with a 40t single front ring and an 11-42t cassette on the rear, CeramicSpeed headset and bottom bracket, ENVE Composites SES 3.4 All Road wheels, ENVE Composites bar, stem and seat post, WTB Venture 700c 40mm tires, Arundel stainless bottle cages, Fabric Scoop saddle and Supacaz bar tape.
For more details about The Service Course, please visit their website