Adventure road bikes have caught on big time here in the UK – there’s something about the extra versatility of these fat-tyred, disc brake machines that seems to have captured people’s imagination.
Yet as a mountain biker, it seems to me that these bikes are slowly but surely morphing into something familiar. In fact, every time I sift through a press release on this sort of bike its claims seem to bring on the déjà vu, and it’s not hard to see why.
Let's start with the frames, which are forever getting longer and slacker – where have we heard that before? Hydraulic disc brakes are becoming rapidly normalised (just like in the world of mountain bikes), single-ring drivetrains are appearing (yes, just like on mountain bikes), as are 650b wheels (okay, you get the idea).
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Let’s take Cannondale’s Slate as a point of discussion. Here we have a bike that broke the mould when it first appeared this time last year. Rather than run with 700c wheels, the Slate comes with smaller 650b hoops, the rolling radius of which could then be raised through the use of portly 42mm rubber. Funnily enough, plenty of tough wheels already existed in that size thanks to a small thing they call mountain biking.
Up front there’s a dedicated Lefty suspension fork with 30mm of properly damped and adjustable suspension – undoubtedly the most technically advanced in this segment… and basically a modified version of what Cannondale has developed for decades now on its mountain bikes. If you've got the cash for the top-level Slate you also get a cyclocross-derived 1x transmission.
You can read more at BikeRadar.com
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