📖 🚲 · 🅒 Ⓒ

The Bicycle Nerds' Past Time Observation

BacaBici.cc

Summary

Bentang Jawa 2026, by the numbers.

A snapshot of the field lining up for Bentang Jawa 2026 — 1500 km, self-supported, across the length of Java — drawn from every setup we were able to document.

Setups documented
178
Distance
1,500 km
Location
Java, Indonesia

Bike type

  • Road 117 · 66%
  • Gravel 53 · 30%
  • Others 8 · 4%

Road bikes dominate the starting line, followed by gravel bikes. This year we see a reduction of other types of bikes, compared to last year's BJ05

Frame material

  • Carbon 125 · 70%
  • Aluminium 25 · 14%
  • Steel 20 · 11%
  • Titanium 8 · 4%

Carbon bikes still win the majority of riders' choice. Aluminium and steel bikes go toe-to-toe, while premium titanium bikes still prove the material's exclusivity

Tire width

Every tire width in millimetres. The trend tightens at 700c x 28–32 mm tires, with several riders opting for more cushion with 35mm tires.

Handlebar type

  • Dropbar 97%
  • Flatbar 3%

Dropbars take nearly the whole field — several hand positions matter when the ride lasts days, not hours. A handful of flatbar bikes made the journey anyway.

Restbar adoption

66%

117 of 178 riders

  • With restbars 66%
  • Without 34%

Clip-on restbars buy one more position to lean on, at a weight penalty most of the field decided was worth carrying.

Electronic shifting

47%

80 of 172 riders

  • Electronic 47%
  • Mechanical 53%

Electronic vs mechanical groupsets. For a 1500km race, it's worth every thought

Five most common configurations

Chainrings and cassette, exactly as they were run.

Gearing, ratio by ratio

  • 1x 41 · 25%
  • 2x 120 · 74%
  • 3x 1 · 1%

Groupset ratios fall into 4 quadrants, split at 4.1 and 1.0: Top Left: Hard to climb, and hard to go fast Top Right: Hard to climb, but fast in the flats Bottom Left: Easier climbing, but lower top speeds Bottom Right: Easy climbing and high top speeds — the sweet spot

One bubble per chainring–sprocket configuration, sized by the riders who ran it. Right is a taller top gear, down is an easier climbing gear.

The fixed-gear riders

3 rode fixed

One ratio for the whole of Java, counted apart from every gearing figure above.

About this data

Every setup on this site was collected and transcribed by hand. We track down the builds riders share on social media, mainly Instagram posts, and log them one by one into a spreadsheet. Manual work means the data can be incomplete, mis-transcribed, or simply out of date, so read these numbers as an honest portrait of what we managed to document, not as an official census.