Are endurance bikes actually slower than road race bikes in the real world? We did a speed test to find out

Nowadays, it's said that an endurance road bike is what most amateur cyclists will be happiest riding on tarmac. They're typically more comfortable, have more relaxed geometry and have space for wider tyres than a road race bike. The only real downside is that they're supposedly slower than racier road bikes, or fully-fledged aero bikes... or are they? 

Despite what the press releases for just about every road race bike this century might tell you, we theorise that most amateur cyclists will be hard-pressed to find any real-world speed differences on an endurance bike. Other publications have suggested similar things, so we decided to conduct a test in an attempt to find out...  

The endurance bike

You might think that to try and prove my point I’m going to be using some really fancy endurance road bike like the Pinarello Dogma X that appeared in another recent video of ours; but instead, the powers that be told me that in the name of fairness, I have to use a "more sensible" endurance bike.

How about the new Van Rysel NCR CF, a bike that currently has a price tag of £2,000 on the Decathlon website? The full review will be live on road.cc in a few weeks time, but for now, with its wide tyre clearances and "do it all" geometry it'll do as our endurance bike for this mini-experiment. 

Van Rysel says that the NCR is its "most all-round bike", and though it still has a "strong focus on performance", we're told "it'll take you anywhere".

> Best road bikes under £2,000 

This particular model has a very blue carbon fibre frame and fork, an electronic 1x groupset (SRAM Apex to be precise), and a Mavic Aksium wheelset. It comes specced with 28mm Hutchinson Fusion 5 Performance tyres, but will fit up to 35mm rubber.

The race bike

To prove my point that endurance bikes aren’t any slower, I planned on racing this NCR against a more specialist race-orientated bike that also costs about £2000. However, my shadowy superiors said that if I really believed that it wasn’t any slower than a race bike, then I should put it up against my very own Specialized Allez Sprint.

My Allez is a bike designed for speed. To be honest, I selected both the frame and components purely for performance rather than comfort.

> Staff Bikes: Jamie's Specialized Allez Sprint

As we've discovered in previous road.cc features, deep wheels can make a significant difference, so to alleviate any advantage I'll be using the same set of wheels on both bikes. After all, you can fit all the same wheels to both a race or endurance bike.

What's the difference?

So, what actually is the difference between the two bikes? Why is one of them called a race bike and the other an endurance bike? This might be obvious to some of you, but for those newer to road cycling it's worth a brief explainer of what an endurance bike is: 

An endurance bike sits in the road bike category. It is generally considered to be something that is designed for comfort and efficiency over longer rides. For this reason, these bikes are very popular with recreational and club road riders.

> Should I buy a race bike or an endurance bike? 

Compared to race bikes, endurance bikes typically have a higher front end, including a longer headtube, shorter reach (which means a shorter top tube), a longer wheelbase, and a front wheel that is further out in front of you. This makes it less agile but also less twitchy. If you’d like the full rundown of the differences between the two then click on the link above.

The NCR has a shallower seat tube angle, shorter head tube and longer chain stays than the Allez Sprint in a compatible size. Even so, it's still a machine with at least one eye on speed, which we guess you're interested in if you're reading this!

The test

The course of our test is 10 kilometres long and includes some hills, some lanes, some descents and some open flat sections. It's been selected as it replicates what most riders are likely to encounter on an average weekend ride here in the UK.

The test will be performed twice on each bike, while I try to keep my heart rate the same on each effort, so we should be able to see which one’s fastest, and by how much. Why not use a power meter? Well, I think that there's a chance I'll have to work harder to put out the same power output in the more aggressive position.

> Are expensive carbon wheels worth it? 

Before you tell us so in the comments section, we're well aware that this isn’t the most scientific test that’s ever been done. This is mostly for fun, so feel free to take the results with a pinch of salt. 

Endurance bike ride impressions

My first effort was on the endurance bike, and despite it being the first time I'd ever ridden this particular bike and the fact that I was on unfamiliar roads to boot, it was easy to feel at home on. Some bikes take a bit of getting used to, but an endurance bike is usually easier to get to grips with (especially for less experienced riders) thanks to the slower handling and more controlled position.

This isn't to say that endurance bikes are just for people out of practice. Israel Premier Tech pro riders used gravel bikes at this year's Paris-Roubaix, demonstrating that more relaxed geometry can still be fast, especially when the conditions are less than ideal.

> How to conquer long bike rides without getting too tired

This confidence was particularly useful on the lane sections and twisty descents on the course, which often had a sprinkling of gravel and potholes.

I did feel more upright on the endurance bike compared to my race bike, which was particularly noticeable on the open flat section along an A-road. Would this result in me losing a significant amount of time?

Race bike ride impressions

> 8 upgrades I've made to my road bike to make it better than a new one

A quick wheel change and a gulp of energy drink and it was time for the race bike. Setting off, it certainly felt faster. The steering is more direct and everything just felt a bit more lively, even with the 1,900g wheelset fitted.

The handlebar was certainly much lower and farther away from the saddle, which resulted in me being much more stretched out. It is worth keeping in mind that dropping your bars won't immediately make your body lower... if your back doesn't want to arch more then it won't! Could I simply be reaching for the bars more resulting in a higher frontal area and more drag?

Results

After switching back over and completing the test once more on each bike, it was time to review the results.

Unsurprisingly the race bike was indeed faster, by around 8 seconds on average over our 10km course. 

This might seem less than you were expecting. When we talked to Ribble on this subject, they told us that an "out-and-out aero race bike could save you up to around 4.5 seconds per mile", with Trek and Specialized providing similar figures to us in the past. On our course then, you would expect the endurance bike to be more like 27 seconds slower rather than 8.

> How much faster could an aero bike make you?

Personally, I think the discrepancy lies in the fact that our course, designed to simulate real-life riding, contains plenty of sections like gravelly descents where there was no real advantage to being on a race bike. In fact, the endurance bike was likely faster in these areas. 

Conclusions

So, is the endurance bike slower? Well, on a 10km route it was fractionally slower, but perhaps by less than you might think. It’s worth remembering that over a longer distance when comfort and fatigue start to play a part, the endurance bike is probably the quicker option for the vast majority of riders.

This is particularly true if you’re not super flexible. It’s very easy to want to copy the pros who ride super aggressive race bikes, but most of them probably spend more hours in a week stretching than a lot of us do riding.

Of course, you could try to get a more relaxed position on a race bike. You could fit a short stem and leave a load of spacers under it, but really the more sensible option would be to buy a bike that’s designed for the position you should be in.

> Giant Defy vs Canyon Endurace vs Lauf Uthald: Which of these endurance road bikes is the fastest?

Luckily endurance bikes are no longer the ugly ducklings of the bike industry. There are now plenty of choices of cracking-looking machines, all available with the same spec as you would get on a race bike. They’re not usually any heavier either.

It’s also worth pointing out that I was solo on all my timed runs, so I was facing the full force of the wind. If you ride in a group then the difference between a race bike and an endurance bike is probably even less.

Some of us may have been suckered into thinking that race bikes are loads quicker, possibly because the press releases for the latest and greatest speed machines always say "20 seconds faster at 40kph", and then another "1 minute faster at 40kph" for the next generation. While that might be true in a wind tunnel, in the real world, where gravel, corners, back pain and confidence exist, I don’t think so. For the vast majority of riders, the endurance bike is the way to go whether you’re interested in speed or not.

> How much slower is a gravel bike on the road? 

Oh, and the other thing I like about endurance bikes... they’re much easier to trackstand on, because your toes are less likely to get caught on the tyre!

Let us know your thoughts on endurance road bikes down below as well as whether the results of our test surprised you.