Our review of the Madone comes at the end of a full season of training and racing. Following extensive input from our entire team, our purpose was to create as in-depth and comprehensive review as possible. We have collectively logged over 5,600 hours and 101,000 miles on the Madone, experiencing at one point or another pretty much every possible riding condition and situation.  Whether it be slogging through 5 hour road races, bombing through technical criteriums, climbing and descending New England’s topography, cornering, sprinting, braking, accelerating, bunny hopping, 100 degree heat, freezing cold, wind, snow, rain, sleet, hail,…you get the picture. We’ve done seven-day races, 120+ mile training epics, motor pacing, and even commutes to work, all on the Madone. The bottom line is that we have a really good idea of how this bike performs from a season in the saddle, and not just from a spin around the neighborhood.Since its launch last season, the new Trek Madone has become one of the most sought after bikes on the market.  With input from some of the top professionals in the world – Lance Armstrong, Alberto Contador, and Levi Leiphiemer, to name a few – Trek combined an unparalleled experience in carbon fiber craftsmanship with a passion for building the world’s best riding bike and developed the new Madone from the ground up. The bike is an exciting combination of technology, innovation and experience that looks like a dream on paper.  With three grand tour victories in the record books, it appears as if the new Madone is living up to those expectations.

For 2008, MetLife Cycling was fortunate enough to partner with Landry’s Bicycles and Trek, giving us the opportunity to spend the season training and racing on the new frameset.  When news spread to the team, the excitement and anticipation was high. We counted the days until the new bikes arrived, and when March rolled around and the winter in New England began to release its herculean grip, the team issue Madones appeared on our doorsteps like belated Christmas presents.

Two fits, one bike

With a 12-man squad covering a wide range of anatomic proportions, strengths and riding characteristics, selecting a single frame appropriate to all can prove challenging.  One of the biggest benefits of the new Madone is its availability in two distinct frame geometries.  Dispute being dubbed “Pro Fit” and “Performance Fit”, there are no quality or performance disparities between the two options.  The primary difference is the length of the head tube, with the Performance Fit being 3cm longer than the rather aggressive (even by other race bike standards) Pro Fit.

The two fit options allowed each rider to find his optimal position – something that all of our riders have fine tuned over many years and thousands of miles, as well as with the help of professional, scientific fitting systems.  Four members of the team – three of which are Category 1 racers – chose a Performance Fit.  The other eight went with Pro Fit frameset, illustrative that the difference is fit rather than performance and shows the valued versatility in the optional geometries.

The Build(s)

The MetLife Cycling bike is built around a 5.2 frameset. While now the mid-level OCLV “Black” fuselage, nested between the entry-level “White” and top-end “Red” variants, the frame is 100% identical to that upon which Alberto Contador won the 2007 Tour de France.  The new Race X Lite carbon fork tapers from the conventional 1 1/8” diameter to an oversized 11/2” lower headset race and features an E2 alloy steerer and carbon crown and legs.

The team bikes were mostly built with Shimano Dura-Ace throughout.  Two of our riders used SRAM-equipped bikes, with a mixture of Force and Red components. Wheels for racing and training were handled by team sponsors NineGs, via their carbon tubular 55mm Exos wheelset, and DT Swiss, with the RR1450 aluminum clinchers. Many team members also train with the Power-Tap SL and 2.4SL power meters laced to DT Swiss rims.  Saddles, bars, stems and pedals were all rider choice. All of the bikes were “pro quality” builds and were consistent in outfitting to previous team fleets.

First Impressions

Although the team had been checking out online photos, mini-reviews, and blogger-hype concerning the Madone for months, there was little substitute for seeing the bike in person for the first time.  The sweeping lines, the bold paint scheme, and the various tube shapes gave the bike an immediate look of “fast”.  The most shocking and apparent feature for those of us familiar with past Trek framesets was the sloping geometry.  Gone is the relatively subdued appearance of the previous generation Madone’s relatively standard-issue angles and lengths.  With a sloped, curving top tube, the new version offers a stunningly sleek look, which can be difficult to turn away from.  Though slippery and smooth in appearance, the Madone also boasts oversized tubing and some of the beefiest bottom bracket and head tube areas in the industry, critical junctions for stiffness and strength.  The feathery-to-the-touch final package barely tipped the scales at a kilo and half for the frame,fork, headset, AND integrated seatmast.  From the looks of things, Trek had seemingly melded the often at-odds characteristics of strength, speed, and svelte, though the true test of the former two were to be put to the true test of a season on the pavement.

General Characteristics

The new Madone represents a huge departure from Trek’s previous high-end offerings as well as a significant leap forward in proprietary bike technology.  Each piece of the fuselage was created to enhance ride quality and performance while at the same time producing a simpler machine in terms of number of pieces used in assembly.  Aside from the sloping geometry, the new Madone showcases three key pieces of new technology: an integrated & oversized bottom bracket design, a 1 1/8 to 1 1/2 inch head tube mated to a tapered fork steerer, and a no-cut seatmast and cap system – an industry first.  The bottom bracket shell design eliminates the need for the industry standard external bottom bracket designs of today. Rather than constrain frame design to component convention, the bottom bracket shell has been increased in width from 68mm to 90mm for maximal lateral stiffness.  In lieu of thread-in cups, The crankset bearings are press-fit into the precision “net molded” carbon fiber shell.  The design allows for easy installation and a more direct junction from crankarm to frame, ultimately resulting in stiffer and more immediate pedal response.  Needless to say, this feature was a hit with the MefLife crew and one that was immediate apparent in our first training rides.  Trek claims a 48% increase in lateral down-tube stiffness, a feature the bike seems to flaunt, taunting the rider to hopeless attempt to flex the junction.   Though conceptually magnificent and successful in practice, we did notice that the precision fit on several frames did not match up exactly with crankset bearing specifications, allowing for slight undesirable play under torque.  This may be due to poor tolerances of the crankset manufacturers rather than any issues with the frames per se, though it is worth noting that proper operation of the Precision Fit systems requires a perfect fit from both.  For the majority of the bikes, however, this was never an issue.  Reliable and smooth Enduro bearings come standard with the frameset and even after ~9,000 miles a piece, almost all of the bearings were spinning like new.

The same design principles of integration to reduce weight and increase stiffness were applied to the Madone’s front end, where the tapered headtube employs a similar integrated “drop-in” bearing design, 1 1/8” on the top, 1 1/2” on the bottom.  Cane Creek provides the excellent quality headset components, though we had a few lower bearings that needed replacing in the course of the season, mostly due to wear from sand and grit that found its way into the crown and lower-bearing area. The result was a noticible increase in turning resistance, slight indexing, and some creaking. Both bottom bracket and headset bearings are Madone-specific, easy to service & replace, and are available at a nominal cost through your local Trek dealer and many online retailers.

The seatmast and cap system addresses the challenges of many current integrated designs by striking a balance between performance and easy-of-use.  Rather than a system requiring the frame to be cut-to-height based on the rider, a procedure that is not reversible and may give considerable deleterious effects on resale value, Trek uses a small no-cut mast onto which the carbon-fiber seat cap clamps. Less than half the height of other such integrated designs, the mast is sealed at the top to keep water out and enhance strength and stiffness. Seat caps are available in two lengths (120mm and 160mm) to accommodate a wide range of fits.  The design greatly improves the vaunted vertical compliance, providing a sublimely comfortable ride.  This was one of the most significant “ride” improvements over the previous Madone, as well as other current top-of-the-line bikes of other companies.  It additionally makes traveling, particularly flying, with a bike significantly easier than most integrated seatmast framesets, as any standard size bike boxes will accommodate the new Madone.  The downside to this design is its decidedly particular setup. Since the seatcap clamps down on the carbon frame at a specified 7Nm, careful consideration is necessary to make sure that the bolts are sufficiently tight, avoiding slippage, yet not so tight so as to damage the frame. This can be a challenging process at first, and not something we’d generally recommend doing on the side of the road with a multi-tool.  That said, with the highly-recommended application of a bit of carbon “grease” (such as that made by Tacx and FSA) and a torque wrench, the recommended 7Nm is more than sufficient to prevent slippage.

Ride Quality/Comfort

The 12 riders of the MetLife cycling team agreed universally on one thing: the new Trek Madone was the most comfortable road bike they had ever ridden.  “I have never experienced a frame with so much stiffness [and] smoothness,” declared MetLife all-rounder Thom Coupe.  The word smooth surfaced in nearly every narrative as testament to the Madone’s luxurious ride. “The bike doesn’t beat you up,” asserted director sportif Brad Sheehan, “in fact it definitely helps on those long rides or consecutive hard weeks of training and racing, where other bikes will require more effort to ride.”  This sentiment highlights a crucial technical feature of the Madone’s vibration-dampening properties, one that goes much further than simply increasing the pleasure of group rides by enthusiast riders.  With less rider input into maintaining comfort and with less muscular fatigue as a result, the rider is left with noticeably more “pop” at the end of a long day in the saddle. “The bike truly shines at the end of a 100 mile ride or 4 hour road race,” wrote team sprinter Nick Bennette, “where the cumulative toll of the effort is significantly reduced as compared to anything else I’ve ever ridden.”  Miraculously, this increase in ride comfort did little to sacrifice stiffness, evident in Bennette’s addendum  “As stiff as anything I’ve ever been on with far greater comfort.   The benefits of the buttery ride extend, too, beyond fatigue and into bike stability and control when encountering adverse road conditions and difficult tarmac, so much so that rouleur and TT-specialist Corey Mason extolled the Madone’s “comfort of going over pave, riding on rough dirt roads and then speeding down a hill at 60+ miles per hour.”

Stiffness

With the overwhelming claims of comfort coming from all corners of the MetLife squad, one might reasonably question the “stiffness” of the frame, namely it’s ability to transfer biomechanical effort into torque on the tarmac.  “Stiffness” is a word that gets thrown around all too often in the bike industry, and is often and falsely associated with rigidity.  In the heyday of aluminum machines, the terms were effectively interchangeable, though the advent of vibration-dampening material assembled into frames with non-degenerate properties (e.g. vertically compliant while laterally stiff) has strained the analogy and the new Trek Madone effectively destroys it. While the ride is inviting, centered, balanced, and smooth, no rider input –from the crankset through the drivetrain to the wheels – is wasted “Whether it be accelerating in a sprint or torquing out of a turn, the Madone feels as if the frame is pushing back up at you with every force you apply,” Coupe explained.  In short, large-scale, low frequency forces – pedaling, pulling up on the bars, railing a corner – cause little to no distortion of the fuselage whereas small and high-frequency inputs, most notably road vibration, are effectively gobbled up by the OCLV carbon.  As rouleur Graham Garber put it, “the power transfer to the rear wheel” is “phenomenal”, and noticeable from the moment you stomp on the pedals.

Weight

Dressed In entry-level build kit – a Bontrager Race Lite cockpit & wheels and Ultegra SL throughout – the Madone 5.2 complete bike is scarcely over 16 pounds.  Though nearly any modern frameset can be built to break this barrier, such a feathery package at the mid-range of a model line is practically unheard of. Team bikes, consisting typically of Dura Ace and either DT Swiss RR1450 or NineGs Exos wheelsets, were more in the 15-pound range. Weight is often and mistakenly considered as primarily of concern to climbers, that loss in mass is effectively lost on those more at home on flatter road race courses or urban criteriums.  Most events, however, tend to be won or lost in accelerations, whether it be in forming the day’s winning breakaway or charging out of a field sprint.  Newton had it right and kept it simple : Force = Mass x Acceleration:  the less mass, the more acceleration.  Team members universally described the Madone as “snappy,” “eager”, and “effortless to get up to speed.”  For Bennette, often relegated to hope for a bunch finish, crept out of the field on hilly road race early in the season, forming the day’s main break and ultimately taking the victory: “I was shocked – I went there hoping to finish as I had been dropped last year and this year I ended up leaving the field behind on the main climb.  It’s not tough to say for certain, but I said to myself as I looked back at the diminishing bunch that ‘this is the bike.’”

Sprinting

As one can imagine, the combination of the previously described stiffness and lightweight make the Madone a sprinter’s dream. Sprinting effectively comes down to power:  how quickly you can put out how much and for how long. The fact that the bike “seems to take that energy and respond with a snappy and powerful transfer to the wheels,” as Brad described, was immediately noticeable to those on the team known for their quickness.  Alain Ferry, sprinter extraordinaire and criterium-specialist, described the Madone’s behavior in the fight to the finish in perhaps best: “it almost feels like it’s accelerating away from me.”  Scott Dolmat-Connell seconded the motion: “from the moment I really pushed this bike on the hills and during sprints, it just flew forward with such ease.”  More so than many other Pro-Am teams, MetLife squad has several “big-boned” riders who’s upper-bodies tend not to resemble the emaciated girl-scout look pervasive in much of the pro peloton.  For these individuals, torsional stiffness – the resistance to flex from the head tube through the down tube into the bottom bracket – is critical for out of the saddle efforts.  Despite some apprehension from these “Clydesdales,” many of whom had ridden exclusively on aluminum frames, not a one could get the Madone to succumb to even the most violent of bar-tugging episodes.  As Graham put it, On the Madone I never saw the chainstays flex, but on other frames I have seen the chainstays swinging like a pendulum.”

Cornering

Much like sprinting and climbing, frame stiffness is of the utmost importance a bike to excel at cornering.  Though perhaps not of interest to casual riders or those who tend to avoid technical criteriums, cyclists accustomed to the New England racing scene – one littered with winding, twisting parcours of all varieties – can certainly appreciate a machine that rides as if on rails when slaloming on the tarmac.   One common complaint regarding carbon frames is that they “mute” the road, a benefit when crusing less-than-ideal pavement but a drawback in situations where one wishes to feel connected to the pavement.  As previously described, the Madone eats up the road imperfections that ultimately lead to fatigue and discomfort, and in doing so, cuts out some of the connection of the rider to the road.  A less-forgiving frame tends to ride like a scalpel: particularly notable in cornering.  As Bennette put it, a rigid fuselage facilitates a “direct transmission that can be felt as one approaches the edge of grip.”  On the Madone, however, this communication is toned-down.  “It took me nearly a dozen crits to come to terms with the changes,” Bennette relayed, “though what I ultimately noticed was that the Trek could actually surpass the limits I had previously been accustomed to, possibly a result of the same vibration-dampening properties that enhance comfort.”  Much in the way a full-suspension mountain bike enhances tire contact with terrain and ultimately improves grip, it is possible that the subtle give engineered into the Madone fuselage actually improves road contact in situations where a more rigid frame would “skip”.  As anyone who’s ever treated road rash knows, this is the first step in an often-unavoidable cascade of carnage.

Descending

Adept at cornering and sprinting and impressive in ride comfort and stiffness, it is little surprise that the Madone scorches down hill like an overweight bobsled team.  Descending prowess is quite simply about high-speed handling, and as Dolmat-Connell explained, “this is by far the best handling and best looking bike that I have ever ridden.”  Some considered the bike even a little too aggressive, such as Graham, who felt that the Madone was “a little too eager to turn at high speeds.”  Most of the team, however, agreed with all-rounder and diesel-imitator Chris Coutu, who found the bike to “maintain a very responsive feel to the road.”

Problems

Though universally regarded by the MetLife team as a joy to ride and race, the Madone was not without it’s imperfections.  Ryan Fleming was particularly irked by the frame’s lack of a replaceable derailleur hanger.  Trek claims that the increased rigidity of a one-piece dropout improves rear derailleur shifting performance, though most of the team would have taken a sluggish shift here and there in place of sending the frame back to Waterloo, WI for repair following a drive-side spill.  Another complaint common to several of the MetLife crew involved the press-fit bearings housed in the bottom bracket and headset.  A few cranksets required frequent tightening, and for some, imperfect tolerances led to pervasive creaks and/or slight bearing play.  As Thom put it, “the headset and bottom bracket always seem to creek and seems to (with lots of racing) come loose or loosen up a bit too often.”  Sheehan recommends that “carbon grease should probably be supplied and used on all interface surfaces with this frame – seatmast, headset and bb.”  Though everyone was supportive of the press-fit concept, a bit more attention to the finished product would make the Madone a practically perfect machine.

Closing

Despite not being a noun found in any officially recognized English dictionary, team climbing machine Charles McCarthy felt the best word to describe the new Madone was “raceability.”, going on to proclaim “this is without a doubt the best bike I have ever ridden.  I can only attribute such high praise for one simple reason: it’s really fun to ride.”  Fun was a concurrent theme in the teams’ reviews.  Dolmat-Connell wrote quite simply “there are two words to describe this bike: pure fun.”  Coupe added that the Madone “is by far the most fun, exciting, amazing, enjoyable and all around most comfortable of a ride I have ever been on.”  It is significant that this praise comes from individuals who have trained and raced on literally dozens of bikes and who’s breath of experience extends beyond that of most recreational riders.  Additionally, these comments followed months of day-in, day-out riding, loving, hating, abusing, crashing, losing, and winning on the Madone, not an afternoon’s jaunt at a press conference.  Ultimately, it is in no singular element or arena that the Madone shines. There are lighter bikes, stiffer bikes, stealthier bikes, flashier bikes.  It is rather, a harmonious combination of these and other elements that give the Madone a Zen-like balance.  Sheehan wrote, “it feels at home everywhere” – there is no situation, unexpected or planned – in which the Madone is out-of-place.  After several weeks on a bike as subtly confident as it is visually stunning, the rider loses all doubt and inhibition and simply points, steers, and powers away, the bike becoming an extension of it’s pilot.  Though not a perfect bicycle, the new Madone is more than proficient in delivering on what is truly the pinnacle of any two-wheeled machine:  the perfect ride.