Specialized Roubaix SWorks Review: Reasons You Should Be Riding the Roubaix

Why I chose the Roubaix

Where I live in northern NSW, the roads can only be best described as being some sort of inter-village 1900s goat track-cum-illicit-moonshine-trail network.

Yes.

Here's the milkman, delivering milk to our road.

Milkman image courtesy of historicaltimes.tumblr.com

I'm joking.

What they're really like is a quiet German country town's road network post RAF overhead night raid with Lancashire squadron, followed by long range artillery bombardment by (several hundred artillery regiments).

Yes, they are that bad.

It's how our roads end up so poorly

The roads are littered with potholes both fresh and repaired. Some stretches of road are simply potholes (there's no original road). Stretches near our place are variously populated with potholes up to a meter wide (on narrow country roads), chunks of asphalt and other debris.

So, a bike capable of handling such high quality road networks is of utmost importance.

Before buying an SWorks Roubaix to test, I also considered:

• Bianchi Infinito
• BH Prisma or Ultralight
• Specialized Tarmac
• BMC Gran Fondo
• Cannondale SuperSix or Synapse

Selection Criteria

There were a few selection criteria that helped me zero in on an SWORKS Roubaix.

1. Cost: because I am not on ridiculous Melbourne engineering wages anymore, I can't spend money on bikes and bike parts in some sort of carbon arms race, as I used to in Melbourne. No need for the lightest parts.
2. Pedigree: what do people say about the bike? Who rides it? Do I know anyone who rides it? Have I ridden it?
3. Geometry: because I predominantly do longer rides, don't race much anymore, and do lots of climbing, I want something more relaxed.
4. Warranty/shop support: can shops nearby (I am 1.5 hrs from the Gold Coast and 2.5hrs from Brisbane) support the bike? What sort of warranty is there?

I didn't need a race bike, as I don't really race anymore. I'd never been a crit racer really, and my previous race bike was a Look 586 RSP. Any racing I might do would likely be very hilly races or long classics like Grafton-Inverell (raced over 228km including a long climb of 18km and lots of ascending/descending).

Why the Specialized Roubaix

After spending a week with Mark Victor, owner of Brisbane's Planet Cycles, I settled on as SL3 SWORKS Project Black Frameset (via pretty good pricing via Specialized's marketing people.)

Why not a later model?

Quite honestly I had a tight budget and the deal from Mark was too good to refuse.

Morever, according to Mark, there was no significant difference between the models.

I could also access very sharp pricing on a BH Prisma (full Ultegra). I also tried chatting to local distributors for BMC (Gran Fondo), Trek (Domane) and Cannondale (SuperSix) but pricing was either too high (Gran Fondo) or they didn't respond (Cannondale and Trek distro in Oz).

So in the end, here's why I settled on a Roubaix.

1. Pedigree: I've owned 2 Roubaixes across 4 years of racing, commuting to work and travelling to Europe, with a hell of a lot of climbing thrown in. As I mentioned I could have opted for the BH but it was a bit of a risk from the perspective I'd never ridden one, and there are no local dealers for BH so I couldn't test one. (Note: I've since tested an Ultralight and bought one.)
2. Geometry: PERFECT for long rides and the incredibly rough roads I talked about.
3. Shop support: there's a Specialized dealer in the town near me.

The Build

Allow me to detour slightly and hopefully provide inspiration to those who've never built a bike.

I've never built a bike before, and I am a poor mechanic. I only recently started doing my own chain swaps (more out of necessity due to proximity to shops, not having a spare bike and also to save bucks) and derailleur adjustments (I know, it's shameful.)

I sadly didn't take any photos of the bike build.

So I thought it would be a fun project to build my first bike with the Roubaix, albeit with help from local rider Greg. Greg helped do the initial cable outers, adding the brakes, cutting the fork (yes, properly), cranks and derailleur.

So, you need to get a seat post. I suggest the Specialized carbon seatpost with Zertz inserts, but the call is yours.

I took the SRAM Red/Force group from my Look, added in a KMC XL chain and Gore Ride On cabling.

(Just on that, I can't speak highly enough of the system I used to have – Yokozuna Reaction. I rate it much more highly than Gore/Jagwire and will probably swap back to it.)

After a week of delays, we got it built and I went for a 60k ride in the hills.

Uh-oh: my derailleur hanger was out of alignment so in the 52×19-28 the chain was falling off the bottom tensioning jockey wheel as well as exhibiting a horrible grinding sound and chain slip.

Nuts!

Suspecting inappropriate chain length after much debugging with my friend mechanic extraordinaire Craig (@uberdomestique), I faffed around with a new chain. When that didn't work, I conceded defeat and took it to About Bikes in Ballina where Bruce put it straight on the stand, bent the DR hanger into place and discovered my D/R *cage* was bent! After fixing that, we were good to go.

(On the plus side, I now know how to bend a hanger without a DAG tool.)

Now, although this was an older SL3, for most of us there is not a great difference. It's also important to remember that the build upon which I've based my review is:

• Alloy stem (3T) and bars (3T Ergonova pros)
• 3T pro carbon)
• SRAM Red cranks (52×36 GXP with wheels mfg BB30-GXP adaptors)
• SRAM Force brakes, shifters, front and rear Mech
• Durace CL7850 clinchers (by far my favourite race/every day wheel)
• Specialized Sworks toupe saddle
• Gore Ride-On outers/ferrules etc

So, not super-racy and light, but good enough.

After finally finishing and being raring to go, the sunny, warm, placid winter days Northern NSW is famous for gave way to rain, endless bloody rain.

Ugh!

But finally, I got to ride.

Specialized Roubaix SWorks Review

Riding the Roubaix SL3 Project Black

“The Specialized Roubaix is stiff yet vertically compliant, and also extremely polyvalent.”

(Just kidding. Don't you get sick of reading the same old stuff in every review? Polyvalent? WTF?)

The Roubaix is no sloppy, endurance bike. Whilst its intended use is ostensibly more endurance focussed rides – think Gran Fondos at the amateur level – it is no slouch.

Look at this beast. Reckon he'd ride a slack bike?

Roubaix Review – image courtesy of Specialized

Feel

I've always felt that a bike should almost be like a comfy pair of slippers. (or a glass of Tasmanian single malt which, by the way, really sticks it to the established Scottish singles.Yes, really.)

Not warm and cuddly, but pretty instantly comfortable.

Like you just belong together.

For me, this best describes the Roubaix.

Going back to the pre-SL days, when I had an Expert then Pro level Roubaix, the bike always felt great.

Climbed very well, sprinted well.

Although I am pretty flexible (by most people's standards) and stretch a lot, I just can't get comfortable on really racy bikes with long and slammed stems and racy geometry.

The Look 586 is a great bike but I always felt it was almost too stiff (more on this later).

I prefer the flexibility of being able to sit on the hoods or flats all day if need be.

I also have a short torso and long legs so the geometry of the Roubaix suits.

There's just something that feels “right” about hopping aboard the Roubaix.

Everything seems naturally placed.

Flats

I was out doing a training session the other day (I need to lose about 4kg and apparently drinking red wine, biccies and cheese and stopping your heretofore running/weights/running regimen ISN'T the way to do it…who knew!) and the effort called for 1 x 40 minute block of sub threshold riding.

I found this incredibly easy: I just popped into the drops and went.

This is a bike you can just sit on, get into the drops and turn yourself inside out.

It's seriously comfortable to ride.

Dead Roads

There's no bike on Planet Earth that could soak up the absolutely sh#t roads I ride on, but the bike that copes best is the Roubaix. (Note: I would love to try a Cannondale SuperSix and Trek Domane as well a Bianchi , Colnago, BH and Wilier. Is that being greedy?).

Instead of sh#tting itself like the Look and making me feel like I'm riding a jackhammer, it is like a leaf on a river: it adapts, flexes and flows around and through bumps and eddies.

It works with the terrain rather than fights in.

This to me is the epitome of a great bike.

In fact it's a bit disconcerting—still—to kind of flow over bumps instead of chatter through them like some sort of 10 star pave sector.

Sworks Roubaix Review

Climbing

I kind of got talked into this bike a little bit by my mate Tim C (for the Melbournites – he manages SBR – so if you are after a Look, Cannondale /others/, go see him. He's a fantastic mechanic too) who told me it was stiff enough for me.

Here's where I feel the Roubaix lets me down a fraction.

Comparatively speaking, the Roubaix is pretty heavy, and more flexible than my Look (which to be fair was an XS so was naturally stiffer and lighter due to less material).

First up, the flex.

I usually set my brake pads up close-ish to the rims. Now, if I really throw the bike from side to side and the wheels (I run stiff wheels) rub, that my friends is flex.

Others will identify flex in their own way, but that's an immediately obvious measure to me, and flex the Roubaix does.

Now, of course, it's probably intended to, given its rightful use: winning Paris Roubaix.

And I'm not even heavy (at 63kg), so the fact that I could identify the flex that easily was surprising to me.

Speed (feel)
I didn't notice it at first but over the last few weeks I've been having a crack at some of my KOMs (some people are getting uncomfortably close to them 🙁 ).

I'm reasonably fit at the moment—I can run close to 40min/10ks and do some crossfit/turbulence training/high intensity stuff, but in no way am I at my peak bike fitness.

Anyway, despite my lack of race fitness, I can still feel the lack of pure speed on the local climbs. I'm miles off my best times. (Again, no amount of training can mitigate too much scotch/coke and choccy biccies!).

Whereas I could whip the Look up 2-4km climbs (often 7-12% pitch) and really feel response, the Roubaix is much less responsive.

There's a climb near our place where I used to be able to ride the bottom half at over 30km/h, really, really pushing it, before it ramped up (12%+). But now, I can't get even close to the same speed.

I can just feel that all the power isn't being transmitted to the road. Be aware I've tested this predominantly with pretty heavy training wheels on (Hplus Son Archetype 23cs laced to Easton hubs).

I also find that when climbing in a seated position I feel very slow. This might be my own perception as I don't ride with people a lot, but it feels very slow nonetheless.

And having ridden a Tarmac Pro (and subsequently an SWorks Tarmac, Colnago C59 and BH Ultralight), I feel like the Tarmac (and these other bikes) is a better climber.

(Obviously there are lots of better climbing bikes, but I am just referring to the Specialized range.)

General feel
Where the Roubaix does feel good on climbs is the ability to move from seated climbing to dancing in the pedals without throwing the bike around and knocking any wheel suckers behind you off their bikes.

Apart from the flex, about the only criticism is that the head tube is the tiniest bit too tall (a design of the bike and something I was aware of) meaning that when you climb you're a little too far forward over the front of the bike.

Moreover, when the bike ships with a ginormous volcano shaped cone spacer that sits on the headset. This thing is truly huge. Fortunately I know someone who works in a bikeshop, so was able to get a Specialized headset spacer much shorter.

When I climb out of the saddle I like to pull back on the hoods and climb from further back on the bike. But because the bars are naturally high, you are almost pulling the front wheel off the ground.

But, I am still running the giant Roubaix volcano-dust cap and a 5mm space so I suppose I could lose 5-15mm there.

Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not saying the Roubaix is a total boat uphill—it's certainly not.

But for those who do a lot of climbing—remember, almost all the roads in my area involve climbing, often at 7-15%—you will notice it on this bike.

But, if you only do occasional climbs, or don't need something FAST up hill, the Roubaix is perfectly at home.

And as I mentioned, I've taken a Roubaix to France several times, including competing in Etape du Tour several times, and it is perfectly at home if you need to sit and tap out a good tempo for 60-120 minutes (Ventoux, Tourmalet etc).

It's just something to be aware of. If you want a pure climbing stallion, this might not be for you.

Sprinting

Many amateur cyclists will not notice an appreciable difference in sprinting capability between the Roubaix and, say, the Tarmac (or any other consumer level bike).

I've won race sprints on flats and climbs on a Roubaix (albeit only at a B grade club level).

Take from that what you will.

But if you want a pure sprint bike this is not for you. (I don't want or need a sprint bike, so this is immaterial to me but thought it worth mentioning.)

Descending

Initially, descending required a bit of adjustment.

The Look was very lively due to it's geometry and only need a nudge in the right direction.

By comparison, the Roubaix needs a touch more effort to accomplish the same outcome.

This adjustment took all of one hairpin (which I almost overshot) and then I was set.

The Roubaix actually tracks really nicely down descents and is really, really fast.

You do need to lean over a touch more, but that's fine; it's just a characteristic of the bike.

However, it turns out it's faster than it feels. Upon uploading my first ride to Strava I beat my PB on a descent by a significant margin.

I've since read a couple of other reviews on the Roubaix and they say the same thing; you end up descending faster because you feel slower, yet the bike tracks corners very well.

And to be honest, I've never felt slow downhill on a Roubaix, nor unsafe. It's very, very stable downhill.

Optimum ride

For me, optimum ride on the Roubaix is achieved by running clinchulars (as my wheel builder mate Josh calls them). Clinchulars can best be characterised as slightly wider rims and tyres, ridden for comfort, efficiency and speed.

I didn't get a chance to test the Roubaix with tubulars, but I'm not sure this is important. If you're riding tubulars on a Roubaix, you're probably, well, racing at Roubaix.

My personal opinion is that you'll want reasonably stiff wheels on this bike (especially if climbing). The bike already soaks up a lot of road noise, so you can probably afford to run stiff wheels to remove wheel flex from the equation.

My first Roubaix shipped with Ultegra wheels (which last and last and last) and Specialized 28c tyres. This was a pretty good combo, but I ended up settling on Ultegra/24c and Durace clinchers/24c which seemed to work well.

There is a whole lot that could be written about why wider tyres are faster and smoother and you can read about the reasons in two articles:

• Why wider tyres are better
• Are wider tyres better: I ask a wheelbuilder)

Where the Roubaix fits in

I hope I haven't made the Roubaix sound bad.

Look at who rides them-Tom Boonen for starters. He could ride a Tarmac or Roubaix on the cobbles but chooses the Roubaix even with all the hellish climbing they do.

And, as the saying goes, a good workman never blames his tools.

And whilst I focussed on hills because I ride them a lot, you shouldn't be detracted by my subjective opinion.

As I mentioned, I've ridden a Roubaix in the Grand Cols of the Alps and the Pyrenees and it climbs very well.

So on that basis, you could be perfectly confident taking it overseas, or buying one on the basis you'll be doing a lot of climbing.

What I am saying, is that if you are buying for pure speed and stiffness, this probably isn't the bike (but then, it's not designed for that, go look at the Venge or Tarmac).

And having ridden a Roubaix for over 5 years, over many, many, many thousands of kilometres, on dead roads, great roads, and up and down big mountains, I'm completely comfortable telling you to consider buying a Roubaix.

If you want something that is ultra-comfortable for long, long rides, climbs reasonably and is a great all-round bike, try the Roubaix.

The Roubaix is for you if you need something:

• Comfortable that you can ride all day (hello Gran Fondos)
• Comfortably climb (think: Alps, not your local 2km 5%-er)
• Descend fast
• That is reasonably stiff and responsive but still a little flexible

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You'll also find a good SWorks Roubaix review at Tony's site.