“Endurance geometry” is pretty much what was “women’s geometry.” Each are examples of upright (narrow/tall) geometries, and each attached a false or misleading or unhelpful descriptor. Their position is their position, and if anything changes it’s the position while in the drops, which means frame geometry doesn’t change, only handlebar geometry. But if you ask people who ride really well (who are competitive at the highest levels), most will tell you there’s little to no difference between their fit coordinates whether road race, classics (the closest thing to endurance road as a use case), and gravel. As you rock back, that’s “endurance” geometry. As you rock forward, that’s race geometry. Bikes like the Giant Defy (which Giant calls its “Endurance Road Bike”), and the Cannondale Synapse (“Endurance Race Geometry positions you forward enough to go hard but upright enough to go long”), are in the "endurance" category mostly because the “fit” geometry is upright. The great misnomer is that “endurance” geometry has anything to do with endurance cycling. Let’s talk about fit geometries and by that I mean geometry relating to how the bike fits (rather than how it handles). There is in my parlance fit versus handling geometries. And by that I mean true endurance road, as opposed to badly misnamed endurance road, which I’ll get to. I believe what you’ll see by the end of this year is the lack of a clear distinction between road race, aero road, and endurance road. We are now in the middle of the great drop bar bike convergence. Then around 2018 we been to see a striking reversal. Now we have gravel bars and unique designs like the Coefficient bar, which has just furthered the divergence.
These were all drop bar bikes (road bar bikes), but even then the divergence continued with handlebars. The one lasso that you could throw over all of this was the handlebar. You could get road bar suspension, disc brakes, aero versus road versus endurance, road versus gravel, the iterations were legion. Other companies followed suit and all of a sudden you could get any kind of road bike, in any geometric style, you wanted. It found it needed another geometry, and then another (geometries it called H1, H2, and H3).
Trek, as an example, offered one dominant carbon road geometry 20 years ago. For 20 years, until year before last, there was a divergence among drop bar bike motifs. It's not optimal for all-day hardpack or gravel riding.There’s been a reversal of polarity in road bike design. They are more like "cushier road bikes." Compared to a gravel / cross / adventure bike, an endurance bike will generally be lighter, less robust frame, slightly more aggressive geometry, narrower tires / less clearance, fewer eyelets for racks. However, endurance bikes are a little different. you'd be fine with any bike in the above categories, as long as they have the clearance you want. The differences between these bikes are - as with so many other things - important for racers, and almost entirely negligible for everyone else. "Adventure bikes" aka light touring bikes are also very similar to both gravel and cross bikes, with a few nice touches for touring (e.g. Gravel racing and riding is getting more popular, so it makes sense that a handful of manufacturers are making bikes oriented towards that market niche. I have recently become obsessed with this idea of the gravel bike (thanks bike industry marketing!).I'd say it's about half marketing, half genuine need.Ī gravel bike is basically a cross bike, with a handful of geometry tweaks specifically designed for racing on gravel. You won't find these conditions on every gravel race, but I'm a fan of disc brakes for the gravel grinder. I was running disc brakes and no fenders, I'd get on the road and let the mud FLY (BTW - I did had a mountain bike fender, cause that mud got really annoying).
#ENDURANCE BIKE VS GRAVEL BIKE FULL#
I'm going to pick up some 35c or 38c before the Benjamin.ĭisc brakes versus rim brakes: Last year's Westside Dirty Benjamin was run in pouring rain and there are a number of trail sections that were MUDDY, this left the rim brake crowd on the roadside with sticks, cleaning out their brakes (same for the full fender crowd). But there was some much fresh gravel on the Almanzo this year, I was hating life. There are even organized gravel rides within riding distance of my front door.Did you ride the Almanzo this year? I had the wrong tires - my 28c were great on the 2014 Benjamin. Still, I'm quite happy with my setup and unlike you I have a lot of gravel available in my area. Even so, 30 is as wide as I am able to go and the selection for good gravel tires is pretty sparse in that size. Yeah, I'm running a steel framed bike and they tend to be a little more generous in clearance.
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