gary p wrote:
Slowman wrote:
neither trek nor any other bike company knows that endurance geometry is. for years endurance geometry has meant taller stacks and shorter reaches. that is just plain silly. most really good gravel racers try to get as close to road geometry as possible, and if there are positions that are inconvenient (e.g., the drops) handlebar geometry solves that. so-called "endurance" geometry is shorthand for what most bike companies consider wimp geometry, but what truly incisive companies realize are geometries that match specific morphologies: "endurance" geometry has nothing to do with endurance riding; or wimpiness; it's geometry for riders whose legs are long and torsos are short.
In this case, Trek seems to be in agreement with you that geo for fit and geo for purpose are two distinct issues. They offer the Domane in two very distinct fit paradigms; a relaxed H3 fit, and the longer/lower H1.5 fit. In a size 58, the H3 has a stack/reach of 611/380 while the H1.5 is 581/396.
i'm not going to let trek off the hook quite that easily. trek's original post-2000 high end carbon road geometry was H1. which almost nobody could ride without a lot of headset spacers. then came H2 and women's geometry. then women's geometry proved to have quite a bit of utility, and some of us were pestering trek to scale that geometry all the way up, which it eventually did, back when it made the 2100 or 2300 (i believe it was). a round tube midrange carbon bike. and that became H3.
but never were these morphological in nature, in trek's narrative. the mythology was about ability. H1 is for our pro racers. H2 is for club racers. H3 is for duffers. and women. who are duffers, by definition. this was trek's narrative, boiled down, these was trek's body language, and you had to beg and bribe a woman pro road cyclist to ride a trek (or specialized) women's geometry bike, otherwise she was riding a man's race bike, with something like H2 geometry, because there was no gender argument for a women's geometry, only a morphological argument, which did not tie to gender.
then we start to see trek and specialized putting endurance or comfort elements into their endurance bikes. and lo, those features were popular. but not everyone had an endurance geometry morphology. so, endurance features start to get put into longer/lower (e.g., H2) geometries.
trek has (nearly) always made great bikes. but it has never understood fit. it has an abysmal record at trying to get a fit system to work for its brand and its dealers, because fit has never been an engineering-driven program for trek. trek's engineers understand bike fit perfectly; that's why they engineer really good fitting bikes; but the engineers have always been shut out of trek's fit programs and projects. product management drove fit, sales drive new product design, and marketing just tries to package and sell whatever it is trek is making. trek makes great bikes. great fitting bikes. but historically few people at trek know why its bikes fit well, and who they fit, and who are candidates for each geometry,
except for the folks inside engineering, and they don't get to give input into either trek's fit programs; or its catalog and web narratives surrounding who should end up with H1, 2, 3.
Dan Empfield
aka Slowman