Kontact 

"Endurance" bikes refer to a range of unrelated features that might be found on a road bike:

Tall stack heights.
Some sort of shock absorbing widget.
Long wheelbases.
High trail forks.

Of course, road race bikes, like the first gen Cervelo R5 had rather tall stack. So this isn't necessarily an endurance thing.

Shock absorbers aren't a bad idea if you have an otherwise harsh frame or fork - which disc brakes and 31.8 bars certainly didn't help. But then big tires came along.

Long wheelbases increase the turning radius of a bike. I have personally never ridden a bike where the very small wheel base made me feel like the bike turned to easily - initiating a turn and holding a line in the turn are different things. Wheelbase really only effects the latter. Long front centers do help eliminate toe rub, which some people find disconcerting.

High trail does influence initiating turns and holding lines in corners. High trail is often stated to be 'more stable', but it is only more stable at higher speeds. Which may make some people feel better in fast descents, but the trade off is that the bike is much harder to ride hands off at low speeds. Which is something a newer rider wouldn't even consider doing in the first place.



Overall, the promise of composite bicycles is that that layup and additional fiber types can greatly change the ride characteristics of a bicycle. So in the old days, the use of longer stays to make an steel 531 ride softer than a racier bike isn't a solution that a modern carbon bike needs to use. Now you can get a 40cm chainstay to flex or absorb any way you like, so you don't need to vary tube lengths to accomplish this.

What always complicates talking about such things is this notion that twitchy race bikes are normal, like everything is a Rigi. But after looking at decades of geometry charts, very few bikes have very short chainstays or wheelbases.

So what do you think about them? Are they accomplishing something, or are they marketing fear of the kind of road bikes pros will ride thousands of miles on in a stage race?

base2 

As the owner of a 2016 R5 (the full-on production model of the 2015 RCA) It was marketed as the "long distance" race bike of the time. The cockpit was a bit higher and a bit closer to make the drops more accessible for longer periods of time for more riders. "Endurance" was the word used in all the marketing literature. As the most aero of all straight road bikes of 2016 and the 10th most aero of all "aero-road bikes" the same year. (Aero-road that was not TT, had recently been invented as a catagory.) I'd say that "Endurance Road" got me the finest riding non-steel bike purchase money could obtain at the time.

From what I recall, several users on the various internet forums scoffed at the hubris of Vroomen White et al. to "decide" for the potential buyer/racer what was to be considered "comfortable" or not...

I gotta hand it to 'em. It is a very comfortable bike. It literally soaks up the miles and disappears under you. Mine currently weighs 14 pounds in a size 58. I have yet to accomplish a 12.5 hour double century on anything other. I've done more centuries and mountain passes on the R5 than any bike, of any type I own.

It's just really good at being a "road bike" and "that," as they say: "is that."

It is perfection to the point of being boring. It is the machine that took "craft" away from the craftsman.

What has it done for me? Inspired a love for premium componentry and artisanal frames. It set the standard by which I judge all other bikes.

Kontact 

I challenge you to find any reference to endurance anywhere in this catalog:
https://issuu.com/radmitte/docs/cervelo-katalog-2015-1

The R series was designed for lightweight and stiffness with comfort. They would not take larger than 23c tires and had typical race geometry aside from the tall front end.

downtube42

When I set out to buy a bike for audax rides up to 1200k, I had some criteria I felt were important for me. Tire clearance, stack, reach, type of brakes, bottle mounts, fender mounts, geometry. I looked at cx bikes for the tire clearance, but most lacked mounts and had aggressive geo. Case in point, my Focus Mares AL. Weirdly has rear fender mounts but zilch for the front fork. I've hacked on a front fender for commuter use, but that's not going on a 1200k. Too twitchy, too harsh, no good way to mount fender or lighting. Most road bikes didn't have tire clearance I wanted or stack I wanted. I bought a Soma Fog Cutter frameset, which is more or less a road bike with massive tire clearance, disc brakes, high stack and fender mounts. A disc fork with wide clearance, drilled crown and fender mounts not super common. Built up my auduax bike and it's been great. One 1200 on that bike.

Fast forward a few years, and everyone out there is marketing a bike with essentially the specs I wanted. Trek Domane. Hidden fender mounts, clearance for 35mm+, iso whatever frame. Rides smooth as silk. I finished 1200km PBP this year with a smile on my face. Literally; there's a finish line photo and I'm genuinely smiling, not grimacing. I don't care what they market it for, it's an audax bike for me.

Now people finish PBP on every type of bike known to man, including pre-war barn finds. One might argue the bike means nothing, or a 70's road bike is the pinnacle of bicycling perfection. Heck I dream of being like my buddy Ian and riding PBP on my fixie. But that will be hard AF, meanwhile my Domane was butter.

PeteHski

I currently own 2 endurance bikes. My first was a 2019 Giant Defy and then I bought a 2022 Canyon Endurace.

My local roads are pretty rough, so the comfort enhancing features (more compliant seatpost, bars, frame, wider wheel rims/tyres) are all welcome and the slightly less aggressive riding position is good for MAMIL century rides.

My Defy has a longer wheelbase than my Endurace and I think it is slightly more stable in very high speed descents, but otherwise they ride pretty much the same.

Road race bikes appear to be edging closer to endurance bikes with wider tyres and slightly less aggressive geometry. So maybe the pros are also benefiting from a little more comfort on grand tours?

TiHabanero

"Endurance Bike" is a category of bike design the Big Red came up with for the disposable income bracket identified in their research back in the early 2000's. They needed to name the category and this is what they came up with. Since it was a huge success for them the other brands jumped on board with similar designs to fit the "new" category of bike.
My take is they ride like sport bikes of the long ago, ie Raliegh International, Competition GS, etc. Something old is new again, history repeats itself all the time.

PeteHski

My take is that they ride like slightly more comfortable and versatile modern road race bikes.

base2 

https://web.archive.org/web/20160115195309/https://www.cervelo.com/en/bikes/r-series.html

It's not that I am going to argue with you about the bike I own or the the marketing verbage used at the time I bought it. 7, almost 8 years over the usage of a noun in some marketing copy is a long time in memory terms. But, all that blather about comfort, stiffness in the right ways, higher stack etc was all meant to describe what we call endurance road when the term "endurance road" hadn't even been coined yet. Much less as a category of bicycle.

See for yourself.

Also, 28's fit nicely. It came with 25's OEM.

genejockey 

I'm not really sure what you're asking. Endurance, Aero, Race/Climbing are just categories to simplify finding a bike that has certain features. Basically it's a way of describing a certain type of bike so that the consumer knows what to expect, and what bikes from different brands to compare. I suspect that the features you find on them probably match what certain consumers wanted, or, looked at differently, they fix what certain consumers complained about.

The biggest thing is shorter reach and taller stack for a given size. That largely defines the category. Race bikes have been getting longer in reach and lower in stack, and not everyone can handle that for hours on end. My Canyon Endurace has roughly an inch higher stack and half an inch shorter reach than the same size of Aeroad and Ultimate. It's comfortable for as many hours as my legs hold out.

Shock absorption - Ever noticed how many threads there are here on finding gloves with lots of padding? Or what the cushiest bar tape is?

Handling - high speed stability at the expense of low speed ability to ride hands-off gives the rider more confidence on descents, while the latter is important if you're racing and can't stop to take off a jacket. But if you're not racing, you stop to take off the jacket, so low speed hands off stability is not that important.

Kontact 

Cervelo didn't think they were building anything but a race bike. My point is that there is nothing about race bikes that prevent them from being comfortable and having taller stacks despite having race type wheelbases and steering geometry. Your post just makes that case.

genejockey 

Yeah, I think you're missing the point. Today - not 2016, today - shorter stack, longer reach, and steering geometry are what DEFINES Race Bikes, and thus the opposite is what defines Endurance Bikes.

Kontact 

Race bikes can have whatever stack the maker wants, and any bike with a certain TT length is going to have a shorter reach if you increase the stack because the head tube is angled back. When you raise your stem you are "decreasing reach".

I've seen low stack endurance bikes and tall stack race bikes. No one thing defines either.

downtube42

Canyon recently removed fender mounts from their Endurace bike. The blurb I saw from Canyon explained if you want fenders, go to another model more suited for dirt and gravel than pave. My take was Canyon knows the roadies they're targeting with that model would be turned off by unracy fender mounts.

The notion nothing is new really misses the point. Demand changes, companies react. Gravel riding didn't grow because big bike came up with a clever new idea. It happened because pavement riding feels unsafe, and people started hitting gravel roads. And yes, they may have pulled out old Raleighs, old MTBs, or anything else that would take a tire wider than 25mm. Go to old threads here and you'll find people talking about how smash chainstays to create clearance, modify old frames for 650b, p-clip fender mounts, put drop bars on mtbs, and on and on. The bike industry didn't lead us to gravel and endurance, they were drug there. There was a short time ago if you wanted clearance on a drop b bar bike, your options were limited. Custom builders, old steel, or mtb conversions. Wide tires for pave didn't happen out of a Trek marketing session, but out of Bicycle Quarterly article, followed by people squeezing the widest tire they could find into their skinny a$$ forks and rear triangles and discovering holy crap that feels nice and isn't slow af. The way we knew it wasn't slow af is because we now have data out the wazoo telling us speed and power, whereas before we had Big Bike and every wrong headed roadie telling us skinny and hard is fast, wide is for children and professors.

Of course once Big Bike is drug kicking and screaming into the next big thing, they're going to market the heck out of it.

genejockey 

But don't the Endurance bikes also have shorter Effective TT lengths? The Endurace has ~ 1 cm shorter TT than the Ultimate, and 1.4cm shorter than the Aeroad.

*sigh*
I'd bet that, if you look within each brand, for the vast majority, their Race bikes will have lower stack and longer reach than their Endurance bikes.

PeteHski

When I was comparing my Canyon Endurace against the Ultimate race bike, there were quite a few subtle details that pushed me toward the former:-

1. Slightly higher stack and shorter reach.
2. More compliant split seatpost
3. More compliant and slightly wider integrated bar/stem
4. Slightly wider endurance wheel rims optimised for 30 mm tyres
5. Slightly more compliant frame seat tube
6. Compact vs Semi-compact gearing

All these details add up to a significantly more comfortable century bike, especially on rougher roads. If I was focusing on shorter rides I may have gone with the Ultimate although I don’t see much compromise with the Endurace.

Kontact 

The Madone 56 has a 55.9 ETT and Domane has a 55.4 ETT. Are you talking about 5mm?

genejockey 

Is 55.9 > 55.4?

Kontact 

And do you think 5mm is an important number when stems come in 10mm increments?

genejockey 

Move your saddle or bars 5mm in any direction. You'll feel a difference. But also, you know, you mentioned TT lengths, and I said Endurance bikes have shorter TTs, and you posted an example of that very thing. So... your point?

terrymorse 

Engineer says "no difference detected".

genejockey 

Engineers.

PeteHski

The Madone also has 14 mm longer reach, 28 mm lower stack, 25 mm shorter wheelbase, 1.6 degree steeper head angle and 8 mm higher BB. So there are some significant geometry differences.

Sy Reene

and no seatpost setback vs 20mm on the Domane

Kontact 

But not fit differences. With spacers the two bikes would fit within mm of each other. Just not at the extremes of highest and lowest stack.

How do you move your bars 5mm when your stem only comes in 10mm increments? Clearly fit has a granularity that is larger than 5mm.

I do not think many cyclists would be affected by a 5mm setback change - unless you are already at the extreme forward end of the spectrum and then you go 5mm forward from there. But we are really talking about reach, not setback.

genejockey 

I imagine it's more tooling costs than granularity of fit. Note that headset spacers go down to 2mm, so apparently stack is more granular than reach, according to you.

Also, most fitter recommendations I've seen say to move your saddle about 3mm at a time. But I'm sure you know better.