johngwheeler

It seems that a lot of trends in endurance road bikes (such as wider tires, disk brakes and some form of suspension in the frame) are also found in typical gravel bikes.

Endurance bikes are still on the "racier" end of the spectrum, often with 28mm tires, but these two styles of bike seem have a lot a common.

Do you agree?

I'm curious as to how generic "road-style" bikes (including pure racers, endurance, gravel, cyclocross, touring) bike design will evolve over the next few years. Will we see elements of mountain bike design creeping in?

John.

Retro Grouch 

At what point does a rainbow change from red to orange?

You're talking as if there are clear demarcations between the various bicycle genres. I don't think such distinctions exist. Pick a bike that you like and that does what you want it to do and call it whatever you like.

Chuck Naill

Hasn't Kona already merged these two genres?

Maelochs

The question of whether "endurance" bikes will continue to employ passive suspension .... I doubt it. Most "endurance bike" owners seem to be primarily road riders, and I doubt most of them ride roads so rough that anything more complicated than we see so far is likely.

I think ti is more marketing-driven---if Specialized or Trek decides it can grab attention by putting a tiny shock in its frame or something ... wanted or needed or not, we will be stuck with it.

As for gravel bikes ... again, marketing. I think most dedicated flat-trail riders would probably like room for wide rubber .... and maybe fenders ... I don't hear people complaining about vibration.

If there is a sizeable class of riders out there riding really bad pavement which feels the need for more shock-absorbing--why aren't the existing pseudo-shock equipped bikes making more of a splash? or maybe they are and I am not hearing about it.

For manufacturers it is always a fine line between offering more intricate (and breakable, and expensive) tech and having enough "Brand New?"' crap to gain an edge in advertising.

Zertz inserts seem not to have had much impact one way or another ... the new compressible bits don't seem to be capturing people's imagination .... Can a tiny head-shock be incorporated without driving up cost and eight, and still be reliable? At what point will roadies be turned off by too many bits at too high a price?

There was some Dutch frame a while back (25-30 years back) that had a compressible portion between the y-shaped seat stays and the down tube--it might have offered almost an inch of deflection. Never heard of it since.

The line between making a perceptible difference in performance and making an unacceptable increase in cost and price is a fine one.

tyrion

New categories create excitement and sales, so there will be merging that creates new categories, not pruning of categories. So gravel bikes seem to be hot now, that can be extended into endurance gravel bikes, touring gravel bikes, and mountain gravel bikes. Once the new categories are established, then they can be combined into a (new) all purpose gravel bike genre. This cycle can be repeated endlessly.

Maelochs

I fear it is an accurate picture of a grim future you paint, my friend.

athrowawaynic

I think the question is really whether people who buy endurance road frames will continue to buy endurance frames. Why not to just buy a gravel bike?

johngwheeler

I think you've hit the nail on the head! I'm sure a fair bit of bike "evolution" is just marketing, designed to spark interest in "the new". It's more a case ofconstant mutation, rather than an upwards evolution.

tyrion

I'm saying the market will promote the distinction (road endurance bike would be lighter, more aero; gravel endurance bike will be more shock absorbing), as well as promote the hybrid.

In answer to your question "why not just buy a gravel bike" - if you just ride on smooth roads then you might not want to pay the weight penalty (or cost penalty) of the shock absorption. No doubt multipurpose bikes will always be popular, but the industry benefits from more categories.

johngwheeler

I think this is what I was really wanting to ask - thanks for clarifiying my thoughts!

If you make a bike light, fast, able to accept wide tires & durable enough for rough surfaces, then you could probably use it for any cycling discipline other than the extreme ends of the spectrum requiring maximum speed (road racing) or robustness (MTB). As people have pointed out before, you used to just buy "a bike", and no-one told you what they could ride it on!

Jim from Boston

Will endurance and gravel bike designs merge in the future?FYA, I have previously posted

tyrion

I don't think this is all that bad. Things like fat bikes might be an oversold fad, but there are some problems they solve nicely. I like drop bar bikes with wider (40mm) tires and these weren't available a few years ago (maybe there were some but they were uncommon and expensive). And who can argue with putting bigger than 26" tires on mountain bikes?

I like the increased variety, although it does take a little more effort to cut through the accompanying BS.

12strings

This is what I always recommend now to those looking for a road bike "but I might take it off-road". The reasonably lightweight road bike that can take larger tires already exists among many manufacturers (gravel/adventure bikes.).

There's no reason why most road bike riders wouldn't be happy with one of these, with narrow road tires, for every possible road ride other than high-level racing. In most "B", or even many "A" groups, a bike like a Carbon Jamis Renegade or Specialized Diverge would not hold one back much at all vs a normal endurance road bike.

Last year in our club's group rides, the 2 fastest guys were riding a cyclocross bike, and a 1991 Aluminum cannondale touring bike with a rack and downtube shifters. The first guy has raced criteriums on hi cross bike (with road tires), and the second guy just rides 50 miles every day and a century or more almost Every weekend.

scott967

Seems to me "endurance" is going away in favor of "RoadMachine"-style frames.

scott s.
.

HTupolev

I have a very hard time believing that a cyclist wouldn't be considerably held back by their shifters being down a river instead of mounted on the bike.

CliffordK

Specialized has already designed handlebars that have a little twist and flex. And there are both stems and seatposts that have a little to a lot of flex.

In a sense, it is easier to flex the stem and bars than it is to build a headshock. However, a performance bike should be relatively rigid for the triangle, bars-seat-bottom bracket, so too much flex is bad.

Anyway, those ideas will bounce around some.
And, I thought it was going the other way, with road machines migrating towards "endurance", with wider tires and taller headtubes.

Convergence of technology?

Crawdaddy

Is a great time in bikes. So many choices for styles of riding. Hope nothing merges. Give us variety!

Garfield Cat

The next genre? The moon bike, capable of traveling the terrain. Might as well ride in the inactive volcano at Haleakala.

12strings

Ah, yes, stupid auto-correct...should be downtube...

NormanF

Gravel road bikes have an endurance road bike geometry.

Where people used to buy endurance road bikes they're now switching to do-it-all bikes like adventure/gravel road bikes suitable foe multi-surface riding.

If you can buy only ONE bike, that is the bike to buy nowadays.

Maelochs

Unless you do not intend to do multi-surface riding .... Where I live I am hard-pressed to think of a place where I could ride a gravel bike. My choices are paved roads and serious MTB trails.

Otherwise I could lobby my wife on the "obvious need" to buy yet another bicycle.

CliffordK

I've found a few places with gravel around here. Some I take the road bike (23/25mm tires), some are reserved for the Cross bike (35mm). One pushed the limits of the cross config. One, I haven't made it to yet, but some people recommend a fat tire bike.

But, back to the question at hand. The OP has asked about an endurance bike for a 50+ yr old transitioning from a hybrid. There are a lot of different directions that one could take that. Fat vs skinny tires should be at the top of the list of considerations. So, one could get an Anyroad or ARD, and mount wide smooth tires on it for comfort, but reasonable performance.

Machka 

Speaking as an endurance rider who just cycled two events in 60 hours this weekend ... a 300 km randonnee and a 200 km randonnee ...

1) Endurance riders ride a lot of different bicycles. Go check out the long distance forum. There's a My Century Bicycle thread going there ... that'll give you some idea. Also, if you ever have the chance of going to the Paris-Brest-Paris 1200 in France (as I have twice), you'll see all sorts of different bicycles.

2) We don't necessarily want, as someone said, the ability to put wide tyres on our endurance bicycles.

There is one 100K event that Rowan and I do here with two fairly lengthy stretches of gravel, and for that we'll ride our touring bicycles which can take slightly wider tyres.

Otherwise, I prefer a fairly lighweight yet durable bicycle, with a geometry that's somewhere between a racing bicycle and a touring bicycle, and able to run 25s.

And that's precisely what I've got!

Kapusta

There already are a number of bikes out there that are combining aspects of dedicated gravel bikes with aspects of road endurance bikes.

I don't think endurance road and gravel bikes are going to merge. You are still going to have those kinds of bikes. But you will also start having more options somewhere in between.

And personally, I think it is awesome.

It is sort of like what happened with MTB 15-20 years ago. In 2000 you had XC bikes, and DH/FR bikes. Very little in between. Then in the early 2000s bikes like the Santa Cruz Heckler and Yeti 575 offered something in between, and people lived it. Now you have a vast array of bikes running the XC-DH spectrum (Trail, All Mountain). And I think that is wonderful.

And of course they are going to come up with new names for bikes that are a blend of road and gravel. So what? It just helps describe the bikes.

kickstart

Only grim if one allows themselves to get sucked into always pursuing the latest trend.

Judging by the incredibly wide variety of bikes that are available, one can have whatever they desire.