Got myself a bit of a treat a week ago. By extensive sweet-talking of the oh so lovely man at Giant cycles I managed to get my hands on a 2009 Defy Advanced test bike.
The Defy is one of a relatively new breed of performance ‘comfortable’ road bikes. Designed to be a slightly more upright, more relaxed, less twitchy less ‘full bore’ than a regular road frame.
This description tended to turn me of a bit as I love twitchy, fast road frames and didn’t like the idea of an ‘old mans’ road bike. I couldn’t have been more wrong and as soon as I pulled it from the box I realised just how off the mark my assumptions were.
First off, it’s a beautiful, racy looking frame that wouldn’t look out of place in any peleton. I find some carbon frames are just a little wild for the sake of it but this one has such a purposeful look about it with beautiful flowing lines. Giant have done a huge amount of work with this frame, in fact even though their top end road frames were as good as they come they have completely re-designed them for 2009. The main changes include most obviously the head-tube which steps down from a standard 1 1/8” at the top to a healthy 1 ¼” at the bottom which stiffens up the front end considerably for pinpoint steering.
Perhaps the biggest change is the bottom bracket, which now makes use of the Shimanos new, integrated bottom bracket system allowing the bottom bracket shell to measure 83mm. across. This allows for a huge area to attach the down tube to and Giant have made full use of this by constructing a huge square profile downtube. All this results in an impressively stiff frame. However it is only stiff in the right directions, i.e. laterally.
Giant have made a lot about the vertical compliance and vibration damping of this frameset and deservedly so. I’ve ridden many carbon framed road bikes over the years and all have made claims about their stiffness or comfort or lightness and whilst many have been great bikes none of them ever seem to live up to the promises. The Defy is I am glad to say a different ball game all together; it’s feathery light and delivers amazing acceleration due to its lateral stiffness, you really can stamp on the pedals as hard as you like in any gear and all the frame does is spring forwards, there’s no tell tale rear brake rub from a twisting frame that some other carbon bikes suffer from, you have total faith that any energy you exert goes directly into propelling you forward.
As to the ‘relaxed’ nature of the frame. Well it doesn’t feel lazy, far from it. The only time you really notice the nature of the frame geometry is at the end of a long day in the saddle when it suddenly becomes apparent that your back and shoulders feel somehow less worked. I did notice the more stable steering, which provided a beautifully neutral feel on long sweeping descents. I’ve ridden more responsive steering bikes but then this isn’t the kind of bike to be scaring yourself with or trying to get your knee down around corners on.
To be honest after a few hundred miles on it I’m beginning to wonder why more road bikes aren’t made like this. Sure, if you’re racing seriously then you may want the ever so slight performance benefits of a more traditional geometry but they really are tiny benefits and no matter how ever much we may think we’re going to give Lance a run for his money on our favourite climb (ha ha) the reality is that most of us ride road bikes for the pleasure of the open road, doing some good mileage and keeping fit. This bike does all that incredibly well, in comfort and whilst looking like it’s doing 50 miles an hour everywhere. All that and I’d be more than happy racing this bike because a little bit of comfort goes a long, long way.
