Geometry

BradLock

Race: aggressive, fast, aerodynamic.
Endurance: comfort, steady, pace.

This is how I often see the road disciplines described, and there's something confusing me -

Many cyclists go for an all-out race geometry on a race bike, designed for... Racing, and use the bike every weekend for - their 50-100 mile endurance rides? Many of which have never raced before and likely never will.

As a complete beginner about to buy my first road bike, it's confusing to know that so many cyclists are using race geometries for endurance purposes, I am in no way slandering this (I'm a beginner, in no position to slander), I'm just posing my confusion to people who know better (you guys)...

If you're doing 100 miles on a Saturday morning, would it not make more sense to do it on a bike designed with a comfortable endurance geometry rather than an aggressive race geometry?

markhewitt1978

Depends on your flexibility. If you can get low into a 'race' position *and* be comfortable, which many can, then you're going to be able to do your 100 miles easier as you're more aero.

ddraver

Yes, but Alberto/Chris/Bradley/etc use the race geometry so it must be "better"

seanorawe

Different strokes for different folks

trek_dan

Its just marketing hype. Different geometry suits different people with different body proportions and flexibility.

imposter2.0

'Race' geometry bikes are routinely used for 5-6 hour tour stages and/or 150 mile classics. If that isn't 'endurance' then I don't know what is. Geometry has been hijacked by advertisers and turned into a load of marketing bollox.

dj58

Best thing to do is to visit your lbs and try both geometries out.

PTestTeam

Imposter wrote:

'Race' geometry bikes are routinely used for 5-6 hour tour stages and/or 150 mile classics. If that isn't 'endurance' then I don't know what is. Geometry has been hijacked by advertisers and turned into a load of marketing bollox.

This. Plus blame Mike Burrows, who designed compact bike frames in Small, Medium, Large etc with a sloping top tube and ended up having to produce stupidly long headtubes to compensate for the smaller frame

chris_bass

race geometry is just a flipped stem and a coupe of spacers away from endurance geometry anyway.

thegreatdivide

Imposter wrote:

'Race' geometry bikes are routinely used for 5-6 hour tour stages and/or 150 mile classics. If that isn't 'endurance' then I don't know what is. Geometry has been hijacked by advertisers and turned into a load of marketing bollox.

What he said. Plus disc brakes.

simon_masterson

Ignore the marketing nonsense and do some reading. A rudimentary understanding of bike geometry is far better than buying based on 'race', 'endurance', 'sportive', etc. You'll also hopefully end up with the most suitable bike for your needs.

kajjal

As above its just mainly marketing spin. Forget the labels and get the bike that fits you with the features you need.

cookeeemonster

It's marketing spin that helps people buy a bike that suits them - pretty damn useful i'd say.

Helps prevent fat or inflexible mamils wasting money on too aggressive a bike (assuming they can't be asked spending hours working out what frame geometry might suit them using just numbers)

bontie

CookeeeMonster wrote:

Helps prevent fat or inflexible mamils wasting money on too aggressive a bike (assuming they can't be asked spending hours working out what frame geometry might suit them using just numbers)

I see far too many pro rac frames with 25mm+ of spacers to believe this

thiscocks

There was a time not too long ago when there was no such thing as an 'Endurance' or 'Sportive' geometry. You just rode a race bike you were comfortable on. Now if you do this people think you are trying to imitate a professional. Weird.