I mounted up 45mm ramblers and they are right up against the FD in 2x and barely clear in 1x setup. It easily fits 38mm ramblers or 40mm Velocitas with plenty of clearance in 1x or 2x gearing setup. Just what I was looking for in a gravel bike. Averaged over 18mph without pushing it too hard and felt fast and smooth and handled the rough sections fine. I've only done one gravel day on it, took it out to ride the 60 mile Castell race course. It certainly takes more power to push it along at speed on fast group rides, but I'm a lot fresher at the end of a 5-6 hour ride. I've been enjoying it so much on the road that my Madone has been mostly sitting unused. I've got a few weeks and 500+ miles on the bike. I agree, that geometry is great and for 38s that is ideal Mosinglespeeder wrote: pls post your thoughts after your first rides
Is there something important I'm missing (besides tire clearance) that the Checkpoint (or another "gravel" bike) would give me over the Domane as a gravel race bike? Unfortunately, I don't have the opportunity to do any serious test rides to compare actual performance. I'm a little torn on this because I was all ready to pick out a gravel bike and the bike I'm leaning toward isn't really designed to be a gravel bike. I also really hate the BB90 press fit BB on the checkpoint, so the threaded BB on the Domane is a big plus. While I like the idea of having flexibility of running larger tires, I think I'd rather save a few watts with the more aero domane frame if that's the trade off. The only downside I see with the Domane on paper is the 38mm tire clearance (and I've read that they take 40+ no problem). Then, I saw that the Domane SL7 has very similar geometry, has isospeed in front and back, and has a few other features I like (2x rather than 1x shifting, threaded BB, aero frame, storage in frame). So, one of the first bikes I looked at was the checkpoint SL7 with the rear isospeed. I've been riding a Madone road bike for years and really like the isospeed system for smoothing out rough roads and gravel. Most of my racing is around TX and our gravel is pretty tame. While I also enjoy "non-race" social gravel rides and mixed surface stuff, I can always use my MTB for cruising around and I want this new bike to be optimized for racing. I'm looking for a fast bike for racing near the pointy end. Been riding/racing gravel mostly on my Spark RC MTB with 45's and every once and a while on my Trek Madone with 28's when I feel like rolling the dice with flats.
I've been holding out buying a "real" gravel bike for a few years.
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