I bought this bike mainly for winter riding because of the fender mounts. This bike rides better than I expected, and I've been riding it all year. It feels quick, handles well, and rides very smooth. It won't let you down on the faster club rides, considering it's an endurance bike.
There are a couple of things that keep this bike from being excellent. The fork rake...The front wheel is out there more so than most bikes, however, the only times it's noticeable are steep climbs like over 10%, hard, out of the saddle efforts, and tight cornering. It's almost like your chasing it, but the rear wheel is tucked under you more and keeps the bike feeling quick on starts and accelerations. Stock weight is the other biggie. My small weighed 21lbs. I changed the wheels and went down a tire size and saved over 2lbs., which transformed the bike immensely. I also changed out everything else except the shifters and derailleurs and got it down to @17.5lbs. Fenders are easy, but the front will require some extra work, because of the way it mounts under the arch of the fork, but you don't need to be a mechanic to make them work. The 105 12 speed is another highlight. It's so effortless and quick. I was thinking about putting electronic shifting on it, but it shifts so good, I'm not sure I will. I also changed out the stem, which seems proprietary, but it's not. I added a Zipp carbon stem and had no issues with cable routing.
All of my other bikes are Look or Time and cost way more than this one, but this one is almost right up there with ride quality after the upgrades I did. Even if you just change the wheels, it will make this bike so much better.
This is a great bike. My friend has one and he thinks so too.
My gravel bike serves double duty as my year round commuter as well. While these tires don't have the greatest puncture protection, they're a good value compromise since I don't have multiple wheelsets or a MTB and I like to enjoy some off-road fun occasionally and these perform really well on light to moderate gravel and easy single track. Though the protection isn't amazing, it's not horrible especially for the price, and they tend to seal up reasonably well with Orange and plug easily with cheap bacon strips when the sealant isn't enough on its own. I've found them to roll nicely on either paved or not, unlike some other gravel tires I've tried - looking at you GravelKing SK's. They're not too difficult to mount tubeless, though I do find I need to top them up every couple days. Panaracer, Goodyear, and Schwalbe tubeless tires that I've tried all held air a bit better, but had other tradeoffs I didn't like. Durability is also decent but not amazing - I've gone through a few sets of these and they tend to last about 2k - 2500 miles. I'm 205lbs so that's about average for me for tires. The Goodyear Connector I tried was going strong at 3500 miles until it got a large cut, but it felt noticeably slower than these Terra Trails. These are a bit of a Jack of All Trades; don't do anything really great but are solid on just about everything. Being that they're on the low end price-wise of tubeless gravel tires makes these my go-to.
I have Campagnolo Bora Ultra carbon wheels on a couple of my bikes. On a hot day the valve of the front wheel pushed through to the inside of the wheel causing an instant flat. That valve had a conical kind of triangular shape which enabled the failure. The ENVE valves are, by comparison, have a long and rectangular base which fit the rim valley perfectly and, once installed, allowed me to pump up the tires with my old Silca pump as quickly as pumping up a tubed tire. This is especially important as on the road puncture management with tubeless tires can be especially difficult.
Two years ago I was losing blood flow in my legs, heart rate soaring on easy rides. Did the MRI, exhaustive tests with doctors and sports medicine, nothing made sense, and then we did a bike fit where we finally figured out the problem was my saddle. I tried at least seven saddles of various brand, shape and size before i found this one and then tried various versions of this one. The shape fits me, and the Supercomfort is definitely more comfortable on long rides. Saddles are personal, but this one works for me. I bought one for every bike I own (4). Not cheap, but well worth the investment to me.
