REGROUP CUSTOM
Two Sarto Raso Gravels, one shared impulse – how a late-night yearning for freedom led Bill and Kim to Regroup, and the open trail.
It's eleven o'clock at night, and Bill is staring at his desk. Outside, somewhere beyond the glow of his apartment in northern Arizona, the desert is doing what it always does in the dark – cooling off, stretching out, being quietly enormous. Inside, Bill is doing none of those things. He's a CFO steering a private company towards an IPO, up at 5:00 AM PST for Wall Street conference calls, in bed at midnight, running on five hours of sleep and toying with a question that won't go away. Well, two, really, but they're connected. What does freedom look like? And, is it this?
He finds his answer on YouTube. Somewhere between the late-night doomscrolling and the next 5 AM alarm, Bill stumbles upon gravel bike racing – riders on drop-bar bikes, out on open trails, no traffic, no shoulder, no close calls – no early AM conference calls! But plenty of space. He starts to feel like “this looks and feels like freedom,” he says as we catch up over Zoom, recalling the moment with the relish of a man who eventually got there. “I don’t like riding on roads. This is gravel. I like the clean geometry of a road bike. But now it’s the best of both worlds.”
That Bill’s wife, Kim, would join him on this journey was never really in question, though she might frame the invitation differently. “I’ve dragged her through this process,” Bill admits with a grin, the kind of confession that earns him a look from Kim that says: yes, you have. I’m fortunate to have them both in front of me. Today, they arrived at Regroup after a long drive from northern Illinois to see their bikes for the first time. Next stop: Tucson for some sweet miles and a proper vacation. The two live about an hour north of Chicago and share the sort of partnership where one person’s obsession becomes a joint venture. Kim was already a mountain bike fan. Gravel, with its promise of off-road freedom on a more elegant platform, was a natural bridge.
Two and a half years ago, they bought a pair of Vitus Venon Evos – solid carbon gravel bikes with SRAM Force, snapped up at a remarkable price from a brand that, unbeknownst to them, was circling the financial drain. The bikes were alright. Bill put in over 4,000 miles in their first full season, notched a century ride, and found himself, at last, out on a trail in the middle of northern Illinois with no time commitments, a little music in his ears, and a feeling he’d been chasing since those late nights behind his desk. Kim rode alongside him. The freedom was real, and it was shared.
But as any cyclist knows, good is the enemy of better. Bill, a self-confessed researcher, the kind of man who builds houses, designs furniture, and once had his banking suits custom-made, began looking for something more—a custom bike. A proper one, measured and fitted, built around him rather than the other way around. He’d always struggled with off-the-shelf frames: at 6’2″ with a 34-inch inseam, an extra-large frame was never dialed in properly, and the workarounds – an angled stem here, a compromise there – niggled at him. A shortlist appeared. Bastion made the cut. And then there was Sarto.
What caught Bill’s eye was the Raso Gravel’s construction – the tri-composite carbon weave married to forged carbon lugs, all visible beneath a clear coat, free of paint veneer—just the raw material front and center. “My Time Gravel Bike is raw carbon,” he explains, referencing the Time ADHX 45 he’d already built up with all-Enve components as a kind of midpoint between the Vitus and wherever this journey was heading. “I’m like, if we just get raw carbon, worst case, you redo the clear coat. It’s going to maintain that integrity.” A gravel bike that could take a stone chip and still look the part. For a man who rides trails that kick up rocks, it was a practical and aesthetic choice.
Finding a dealer proved to be the next adventure. Sarto has a handful of US stockists, and among them, Regroup caught Bill’s radar. He reached out to Adam, had what he describes as “a really nice conversation – that’s an understatement, he’s a prince,” and, on a subsequent trip to Arizona, he and Kim visited the shop, toured the space, met the team, and had an Americano at the café. Bill was sold, and not just on the bikes, but on the relationship. “I like him. These bikes are phenomenal. I’ve done all my research. I’m going with Adam, and we’re going to do this. The incredible coffee might have helped things along.”
And so, two Sarto Raso Gravels were ordered: both custom geometries, each clear-coated over raw carbon, built with SRAM Red AXS 1×13 – because, as Bill puts it, if you’re investing in a custom carbon frame, saving a thousand dollars on the groupset doesn’t make sense. But from there, the bikes diverge.
ON BUILDING A BIKE, SOME OF BILL'S CONCERNS
Kim’s Raso features the tri-composite weave with a red thread running through the carbon – a color that shifts from subtle to vivid depending on the light. Indoors, under fluorescent, you’d barely know it was there. Outside, in the Arizona sun, it pops. She opted for pinstriping at the junctions where the tri-composite meets the forged carbon lugs, a design decision born of a concern that the two finishes, unpainted, might look mismatched. The Sarto logo, meanwhile, is rendered as an outline rather than a solid fill, letting the fabric texture of the carbon breathe through. “I’m very happy with how it turned out,” says Kim, who is, by her own admission, the quieter half of this duo – but no less certain about what she wants.
Bill’s Raso is another thing entirely. He chose a new ribbed tri-composite weave he’d spotted on Sarto’s Instagram in December – a pattern so fresh that, when he asked Adam whether Sarto had ever combined it with forged carbon forks, the answer was no. Nobody had. “I’m like, you know what, I have a good eye for this stuff. I think we’re just going to go for it.” What followed were a few restless nights, the particular anxiety of a man who has committed serious money to a combination that exists only in his imagination. Would the two carbon textures clash? Would it look, as he so delicately puts it, like something went wrong? He decided he could live with the worst case. It was still going to be a Sarto.
The reveal happened earlier today, just outside the room they’re chatting to me from at Regroup, with both bikes on pedestals. Adam, wisely, had refused to send photos during the three-day drive from Chicago. He wanted the moment to land in person. Bill saw Kim’s first and momentarily mistook it for his own – the two bikes, both dark, both raw carbon, read as siblings until you got close. Then he turned to his. “Oh, my goodness. This looks amazing.” The ribbed weave and forged carbon, it turned out, were made for each other. No pinstriping needed. The textures flow, different but harmonious, like two verses of the same song.
Neither bike had been ridden at the time of our conversation – that pleasure was days away, pending sessions with Barry Anderson, Regroup’s Director of Fit and Biomechanics, who would dial in the final details. Bill, who has two cracked vertebrae from separate accidents earlier in life, had always just dealt with the resulting back pain on the bike. A custom geometry and a proper fit promised something new: a position that didn’t ask him to simply endure. Kim’s fit had already surfaced a revelation of its own. On a previous visit, Barry’s pressure mapping had identified that her Fizik 3D-printed saddle – a custom piece from their Chicago shop – was way off. The culprit? A defective scanner that couldn’t read a lighter rider accurately. Barry caught what the technology missed, and a replacement saddle was on its way. “Having somebody that knowledgeable and direct, focused on your needs – it’s personalized,” says Kim. “He’s listening to you.”
The plan from here reads like a cycling holiday with a purpose: fit sessions at Regroup, a short shakedown ride, then four weeks in Tucson on the Loop – 140 miles of car-free, paved bike path that drew Bill and Kim to Arizona in the first place. The Sartos will stay on the asphalt for now, racking up miles, while the Time and Vitus bikes handle the gravel trails around Tucson. After that, back to Regroup for final tweaks, then into BikeFlights boxes and home to Chicago, where a full Midwestern summer awaits.
Seven bikes later – two Vitus, two mountain bikes, a Time, and now two Sartos – Bill and Kim have found what Bill was searching for behind that desk at eleven o’clock at night. It looks like two custom Italian gravel bikes, a trail in Illinois, the wide-open Loop in Tucson, and the rare luxury of time spent doing exactly what you want, with the person you want to do it with. Freedom, it turns out, has drop bars and 45mm tires.
