MattTheHat 

After 2,600 miles on my Canyon Endurace in the past four months, it's been re-homed. I really like the bike but I just can't ride it anywhere near as long as I can ride the Diverge. Problem is, now the Diverge feels squishy and I really don't enjoy riding it. I road the Diverge on a solo century in January. My body was hurting, but it was doable. I honestly don't think I could ride 100 miles on the Endurace. At about the 35 mile mark I'm pretty beat up.

I just pulled the trigger on a Specialized Roubaix Expert. It should be a little easier on my body than the Endurace as it has slightly more relaxed geometry and the FutureShock 2. I get electronic shifting, a threaded bottom bracket, and carbon wheels as a bonus.

I'm going to try to give it a good maiden voyage in the morning and hope to be able to remember to stop for a few pics along the way.


-Matt

mrt2you

congrats on the new bike,
i went from a trek 720 hybrid to a 2001 trek 100 alloy bike to a 2008 roubaix elite carbon to a 2010 roubaix elite carbon to a just purchased 2014 roubaix expert carbon with DI2 shifting and disc brakes over the last 1 years.
a new roubaix with FutureShock 2 and DI2 shifting would be a dream bike for me. i just can't justify spending the extra $$$ to do so at this time.

looking at your bike list i see a 18 diverge comp also. i have been thinking about one of them also. it would be interesting to hear about how much different the 2 ride. although the roubaix has DI2 and carbon wheels and the diverge is a comp so i would assume it has cable shifting with rim brakes and spring front suspension instead of hydraulic so a honest comparison would would be difficult. still like to hear the about how different they ride.

MattTheHat 

This is my first impression after a single 45 mile ride.

The ride this morning covered a lot of different road surfaces from concrete, asphalt, chip seal, concrete multi use paths, and even a very small amount of dirt. I rode with the stock seat, which for me is about like sitting on a brick. I should have installed the saddle I normally ride which is a big, ugly Serfas "Dual Density" gel saddle. I've tried about a dozen different saddles, and it's by far the best of them for me. I've ridden about 7,000 miles on that saddle.

My 2018 Diverge comp is disk brake, with 105 FD and RD but has a 48/32 Praxis Alba crank set. I'm not a fan of the crank set, and this is one of the reasons why I went with the Expert model on the Roubaix. My primary reason was the FutureShock 2. I like the idea of the hydraulic dampening and the adjustability, though I figured I'd basically always run it one notch below locked out. There is no service on the FutureShock 2. According to Specialized, if it goes bad, they simply replace it under the frame warranty. That sounds a lot better than a 500 hour service interval on the FutureShock 1.5. The other thing I had to have was Ultegra. I honestly would have preferred non-electronic shifting. But after the first ride, I'm sold. DI2 is nice!

I have the stiffest spring installed in the Diverge. With the FutureShock 2 at the minimum setting, the front end feels a bit softer than the Diverge. But the rest of the bike feels firmer. So, all in all, it kind of felt very similar...a little too squishy for me. That was until about mile 40 and a really nasty section of fault-ridden chip seal.

If I turn the FutureShock all the way to maximum, the bike feels a lot more like my Endurace did. I did not anticipate wanting to adjust the FutureShock during my ride. At all. Interestingly, there are a couple of different sections of my ride where the concrete wasn't floated correctly (one a road section and another a section of MUP). When riding across the surfaces, you get kind of a modulation feeling. These sections aren't very long, so it's not a big deal, but if you had to ride on that type of surface for any length of time, your hands would probably go numb pretty quickly. I found that turning down he dampening really affected that modulation feeling. It's like it slowed the frequency of the modulation way down. It was still there, but significantly reduced. Not a big deal, but I found it interesting and I wondered if there might be a similar effect on gravel.

The end result is that the ride wasn't too squishy the way the Diverge feels to me now. I only managed a 45 mile ride on the Endurace once (three or four 40 mile rides, though) in the four months that I was riding it, and that was with my trusty Serfas saddle. I've said that I don't think I could ride the Endurace 100 miles. I believe with the Serfas saddle I could do so on the Roubaix.

I did notice that the FutureShock 2 is more effective on bumps than drop offs. It handles smooth bumps (like those concrete blobs you run across from time to time) very, very well. You feel them, but they are dampened very nicely. Square bumps are harsher. Surface drops are significantly harsher yet. Not a big deal, but interesting.

At my age and weight I don't do much sprinting. I did some today, both with the FS2 at minimum and with it at maximum. At minimum, I could feel the front end moving up and down. It wasn't a horrible experience (probably because it was similar to the Diverge), but I could see that some folks wouldn't care for it. Set to maximum the bike felt very much like the Endurace while sprinting. I could still feel the front compressing a bit, but it was not objectionable at all to me. Again, I could see that some folks would not like it at first, but I think most could get used to it without much trouble.

-Matt

MattTheHat 

Aahzz

Nice ride!

MattTheHat 

A couple more comments after another ride, this one 30 miles:

The shingle attached to the top of the seat post could be worse.

I'm struck by how smooth the bike is on good roads. My guess is that's primarily down to the carbon wheels.

The Di2 is sweet. I thought the smallish shift buttons were going to be a problem, but it turns out they're placed perfectly. I'm already very used to them. The brifters themselves are smaller in diameter than the Ultegra or 105 brifters. This is a good thing for me as it provides a more secure grip, especially when cranking hard out of the saddle..which I generally try to avoid.

I thought I would probably end up leaving the FS2 dampener setting almost all the way up (hardest). I've been slowly turning it down and I'm currently right in the middle. At that setting the bike is definitely more comfortable than the Endurace and definitely less squishy than the Diverge.

I started watching my average power output about an hour into my ride this morning. It slowly increased over the next hour right up until I got back home. Average power is not something I've ever looked at mid-ride, but I was honestly shocked to see that it did not drop, much less go up. That could have been simply because I was watching it and trying harder, or it could be from slightly less fatigue that what I was used to on the Endurace.

So far I'm very pleased.

-Matt