In 2017, a youthful, fitter, maybe stupider model of myself selected to reap the benefits of a British heatwave by driving from my then-home in Exeter to Bristol, then London, and again once more over 4 days. 4 consecutive 100-ish mile days in wonderful sunshine, the one ideas occupying my thoughts together with the place I’d cease for a bathroom break, and what I might have for lunch.
My solely reward for the trouble was a couple of unsavoury tan strains and fond reminiscences.
I did it on an outdated bike, with a creaking rear wheel, and for some unknown cause given the climate, full-length mudguards.
I’ve since moved to Bathtub, house of Netflix’s Bridgerton, the Sally Lunn bun, and Cyclingnews headquarters at Future Publishing. For these unfamiliar, that is round 10 miles from Bristol, and I’ve needed to repeat the London leg of that earlier riden ever since.
Seven years on I’m older, relatively much less match, and with grownup duties that usually don’t align with sodding off for an eight-hour plod eastward. Regardless, the itch was there, patiently ready to be scratched.
Enter proper of the stage, my job. As a biking tech journalist, I get to play with the most recent bikes, type opinions, and share them with the world. I do my finest to maintain these opinions protected and well-rounded, so I’m not often one for a sizzling take, however I’ve not too long ago been combating with one which, just like the aforementioned itch, I can’t shake.
My spicy sizzling take (most likely extra Rogan Josh than Vindaloo) is that the time period ‘race bike’ is exclusionary. So many occasions I’ve heard somebody conclude {that a} sure kind of motorcycle isn’t for them just because they don’t race, and I feel that robs them of the potential enjoyment of proudly owning a motorbike that’s snappy, agile, quick and… properly… racy.
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Chances are high, regardless of not getting modified in a random leisure centre automotive park at 8 AM on a dreary Sunday morning, poking security pins by your favorite jersey after which driving at your restrict for a predetermined distance within the identify of type-two enjoyable, you most likely do nonetheless race.
You race your folks to city indicators or your common velocity from the final journey, you chase that seemingly elusive Strava KOM, you time trial as quick as doable to make it to the bike store in time for closing time, otherwise you race the sundown after getting caught out by the currently-dwindling summer time evenings.
Otherwise you do what I discover myself doing all too usually, and race the clock to get house on the time you informed your higher half you’d be.
To show my level, in a roundabout kind of manner, I took one of many quickest race bikes in the marketplace proper now, the all-new Pinarello Dogma F and recreated that aforementioned journey to London, ending on the Pinarello flagship retailer on Regent Avenue, simply not far away from Buckingham Palace and The Mall on which Bradley Wiggins piloted a Pinarello of his personal to Olympic Video games Time Trial victory in 2012.
Grownup accountability mixed with diminished health meant I may solely decide to sooner or later, and thus I bought the prepare house as soon as I would arrived in London. However nonetheless, I plotted a 200km route, utilizing a lot of the similar roads as final time, and off I chugged eastward into the rising solar.
The bike
The Dogma F offers an ideal illustration of a contemporary race bike. At £12,500 on this spec, there isn’t any denying it is a superbike. And whereas many manufacturers are lastly merging their aero and light-weight bikes right into a one-bike resolution – a la Trek with the brand new Madone and Specialised with the Tarmac SL8 – the Dogma vary has at all times promised a best-of-both-worlds method as Pinarello’s aero all-rounder for greater than a decade.
The most recent mannequin, which launched forward of the 2024 Tour de France, took its extensively revered namesake predecessor and eked out a handful of so-called ‘marginal positive factors’ – a phrase that the Pinarello-sponsored Ineos Grenadiers staff made well-known all through the 2010s. A 108-gram saving, 0.2% drag discount and elevated tyre clearance ensured the Dogma F stays on the leading edge of contemporary race bikes, and made it the best bike to check my idea.
I knew the journey could be predominantly flat, so the Dogma’s aero credentials could be key – this was a ‘race to closing time’ in any case! – however understanding that Richmond Park has a couple of hills which might be unwelcome after 180km, I used to be equally appreciative of the bike’s market-leading weight.
The query I needed to reply is: can a race bike do extra than simply race?
I hate the exclusionary notion that race bikes are for an elitist subgroup of cyclists, so extra pertinently, should you don’t pin on a quantity to ‘race’ within the conventional sense, why can’t you continue to personal a race bike?
The solutions, to be frank, are: it doesn’t, and you may.
What makes a race bike?
As touched on above, the Dogma F is about as premium a race bike as they get. With its Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 groupset, one-piece aero MOST cockpit, and Princeton Carbonworks wheels shod with Continental GP5000 S TR tyres, there’s little left on the desk by way of efficiency.
The bike I rode is not too dissimilar from that utilized by the professional riders of Ineos Grenadiers. These racers frequently cowl 200km days on the bike, at considerably sooner speeds and better energy than I ever will, so there isn’t any doubt the bike can cowl such a distance, however the day’s focus was as a lot by myself physique’s response to the gap because the bike itself.
Race bikes are usually differentiated by their geometry. A steeper head angle and a shorter wheelbase sharpen up the steering response, a decrease stack places the rider in a decrease, extra forward-leaning place (usually described as ‘aggressive’, which doesn’t assist), and the longer attain will often stretch the rider out.
The result’s a relatively extra aerodynamic rider place that, if sustainable, means sooner speeds for equal energy — or equal velocity for lowered energy — in a motorbike that’s lighter, extra responsive, extra agile, and when the model will get all the things proper, it creates a motorbike that’s considerably extra enjoyable to journey.
What’s extra, fashionable race bikes are considerably extra versatile and succesful than their ancestors. With 28mm tyres now turning into the norm – the Dogma F can deal with 30mm tyres with room to spare – a lot of the energy-sapping vibrations on race bikes of outdated are absorbed earlier than they even get to your palms. Likewise, the extra accommodating gears enable for a a lot wider vary of terrain to be tackled by an equally big selection of skills.
The place as soon as, race bikes had been fitted with huge knee-busting gears, these days the broader vary cassettes provide a extra accommodating simple gear, that means you’ll be able to hold spinning a excessive cadence even when Richmond Park throws a hill at you 180km into the journey.
All optimistic issues up to now, however what occurs when that place isn’t sustainable?
Professional riders profit from excessive flexibility and core stability, to allow them to simply journey 200km within the stretched-out place, however like several 30-something highway bike owner who spent the whole thing of their first three a long time on this earth ignoring power and conditioning coaching or stretching, I’ve my record of aches that flare up on a protracted journey.
I would be mendacity if I mentioned these points did not come up on this journey, however relatively than want I had a geometry with shorter attain, I merely shuffled my palms backwards on the hoods or rode on the tops. The latter was actually helped by the good flat aero cockpit on the Dogma F, which Pinarello has designed to be taped.
I admire that’s a compromise that I most likely wouldn’t have wanted to make if I had been on an endurance bike, nevertheless it’s one I might be blissful to make once more so as to hold the extra snappiness I loved as I zig-zagged my manner by London’s site visitors and the aerodynamic positive factors I loved earlier within the day as I rode at 32km/h in zone two. The sharp dealing with helped me keep away from not less than two near-misses with inattentive drivers, for instance.
Now, I’m not naive to the very fact that there’s a huge array of superb endurance bikes in the marketplace. Nor to the truth that there can be individuals on the market for whom endurance bikes will genuinely be the higher alternative. However should you take one factor away from this text, I’d prefer it to be a momentary pause for thought earlier than you’re taking the wise however enjoyable bike as a substitute of the actually enjoyable bike.
Think about you’re looking to buy a brand new automotive. You’re a wise grownup so that you argue that an property automotive or an MPV is the appropriate alternative. You inform your self that you simply want the extra load house these automobiles present. Let’s say they’ve 500 litres.
If I then informed you that in your total driving historical past, you’ve by no means used greater than 250L of house, and for a similar cash as your property/MPV buy, you could possibly get a hatchback that’s way more enjoyable to drive, extra economical, sooner, and with extra load house than the 250L you employ, you’d suppose twice about which one to purchase.
Now take that metaphor and reapply it to race bikes, the place load house is the extra relaxed geometry. If you really want it, then the trade’s plethora of endurance bikes shouldn’t be ignored. Pinarello itself makes the Dogma X, for instance.
However earlier than you do, listed here are two arguments:
Firstly; do you truly know a race bike isn’t for you? Have you ever ridden one – and I imply actually ridden one, past a fast spin round your native store’s automotive park the place any new bike will really feel unfamiliar and uncomfortable?
In the identical manner that switching to very slim handlebars takes a few rides to get used to, however rapidly turns into pure, so can driving a race bike.
Secondly; if it is aches and pains which are driving your determination, are they fixable?
As a substitute of conceding that race bikes merely aren’t for you, why not make a cope with your self? Purchase the Dogma F, take pleasure in sharp dealing with, aero positive factors and the smoothness of the Princeton Carbonworks wheels, after which go and see a physiotherapist as soon as a month to work on these niggling aches and pains.
If you may get a motorbike that’s sooner, extra enjoyable, and extra thrilling to journey, and couple it with an enchancment in your total well being by way of higher core stability or fastened imbalances, that’s a win-win in my view.
The journey to London
The humorous factor in regards to the journey is that, regardless of being on the bike for round seven hours, it was about as uneventful as they arrive.
The Dogma F did not miss a beat, as you’d hope for a motorbike of this stage.
The primary half-hour had been spent following my regular commute path to the workplace, a brief descent, a sluggish climb, then a protracted quick drop into Bathtub, mockingly passing the close by criterium course, earlier than plodding throughout the town within the morning site visitors.
The bike’s fast dealing with helped right here earlier than the 7kg weight aided on the climb out of Bathtub eastward towards Field and Corsham.
From right here, the highway is a mild adverse gradient just about all the best way to Studying. I adopted the A4, a straight highway that runs parallel south of the close by M4 motorway, and actually loved moving into an aero place and seeing 30km/h-plus on my Wahoo laptop whereas driving at what felt like a simple energy.
As I handed Avebury and the doorway to the Ridgeway, Britain’s oldest highway which is healthier described as a gravel monitor. A part of me wished I may veer off and gravel my manner eastward as a substitute, however that is a considerably more durable journey for a special bike on a special day.
I carried on earlier than veering south round Studying, onward to Bracknell and Ascot, then by Surrey. It was right here that racing proved itself an everpresent idea in highway biking. Stopped at site visitors lights, a rider on an Orbea pulled up alongside, exclaiming his admiration for the Dogma F.
However as the sunshine turned inexperienced and we began pedalling away, my new good friend requested relatively abruptly: “What’s your common velocity?”
That is not an information area I are inclined to have on my Wahoo laptop, so I fumbled on the buttons to see if I may discover it on one of many alternate pages, considerably shocked by the directness of the query.
“I do not know, about 27k/h I feel,” I replied, two layers of confusion evident in my phrases.
“Too sluggish for me,” he blurted, virtually earlier than I may punctuate my reply, and simply as rapidly, he was on the pedals sprinting to journey off.
Maybe London cyclists are simply impolite – they actually do not wave at one another as a lot as within the Westcountry – or maybe he was a particular case. Both manner, I used to be relatively glad to be rid of him as I continued eastward, following the Thames, and passing a gentle stream of Londoners heading in the other way, escaping the town for his or her Friday night time journey.
Quickly I hit Richmond Park, and after a fast climb – the bike’s 7.2kg weight serving to me dispatch it with relative ease – I used to be into the ultimate stretch. It is right here that the site visitors turned the largest issue. Not like variety of others I witnessed on bikes, I am not the type to obnoxiously minimize previous automobiles and blast by purple lights.
In consequence, a lot of the last hour on the bike was spent stopping and beginning, filtering by site visitors the place protected, and customarily benefitting from the bike’s acceleration, dealing with and responsiveness in an unintended however efficient manner.
My arrival on the Pinarello retailer was a becoming endpoint. Sadly, they did not have the aero headset spacers I hoped they’d carry in inventory, however my level had been confirmed.
The Dogma F, as racy a race bike as they arrive, was a sound accomplice for a 200km plod throughout the nation.
