Since the inception of the first bicycles, there have been three fundamental truths: We love to ride fast. We love to ride far. We love to feel good while we do it. Creating a bike that’s great at all three isn’t easy. Stiff bikes handle like a dream under speed and force but can leave your body fatigued and your hands numb. Bikes that elevate comfort feel great on long rides but can waiver under pressure at high speeds and compromise pedalling efficiency. Achieving both comfort and performance in one bicycle? Now that was a real mission.
Fortunately for all of us, the engineers at Trek are never ones to turn down a challenge. Our team spent countless hours exploring suspension systems, elastomers, vibration dampers and more, before finally landing on our golden ticket in 2012 – the IsoSpeed. Time has raced by since the IsoSpeed first hit the road, but we’ve been quietly perfecting it ever since.
IsoSpeed works by absorbing bumps in the road and trail, so you can ride stronger and more comfortably without sacrificing the feel and efficiency of a traditional bike.
It challenges other vibration-damping tech by maintaining the same diamond-shape frame as traditional bikes but decoupling the seat tube from the frame. This allows the bike to respond and manoeuvre just like a standard race bike, while the decoupled seat tube enables enough vertical flex to elevate comfort for every rider.
This simplified and smart design soaks up vibration for a smooth ride without bogging you down with energy-gobbling suspension.
Since its creation in 2012, the IsoSpeed has held its own under Trek’s top athletes through the most notoriously challenging races in the world. From Strade Bianche and Ronde van Vlaanderen to Paris Roubaix, IsoSpeed has helped our athletes conquer body-numbing cobbles and rough roads, giving them the energetic edge to hammer for the breakaway and take their place on the podium.
IsoSpeed was first created to provide faster bikes for our professional racers competing on rough roads and rugged cross-country mountain bike trails. Our team riders are a key element in our development process. They spend more time on the bike than just about anyone, and scrutinise the most minute details, providing us with invaluable feedback that’s paramount to building the best bikes in the world.
But we don’t just leave the judgement up to human perception – we also test and validate IsoSpeed technology in our lab. We built a proprietary treadmill that mimics real-life conditions and use sensors to monitor vibrations and forces transferring from the road to the rider, collecting data to determine how we can dissipate vibrations through the bike. On paper it may just look like a lot of numbers, but these numbers help us provide a meaningful difference in the quality and comfort of every ride.
