Hot on the heels of the new Domane Disc is a rough road version for the high heels set. The new Trek Silque women’s endurance road bike takes the IsoSpeed features and slightly relaxed geometry of their rough road bike and finally gives it a proper female-specific version.
The official release is coming soon with formal details and tech specs, but they’re in dealers as of last week, which is how we got this preliminary info and photos. Word is the Domane WSD (women specific design) versions, which were essentially rebadged frames with a couple of spec changes, will be going away in favor of the new Silque.
The model shown here is the SLX, equivalent to a 5-series but with 600-series OCLV carbon fiber. That gives it a fairly high end spec with a seat mast rather than seatpost, which Trek has said imbues the biggest damping benefit to the IsoSpeed design.
Up front, there’s a tapered fork with ridged sides and the same curve and offset axle placement as the Domane, suggesting it shares the asymmetric design to improve bump compliance.
The IsoSpeed coupler (or decoupler, depending on your point of view) separates the seat tube and top tube/seatstay junction with a pivot and elastomer, allowing the full length of the seat tube to flex, acting like a giant leaf spring soaking up hits and vibration.
This photo’s blown out intentionally to show the underside. Smooth operator, indeed.
A BB90 bottom bracket makes for a very clean, flush crank interface and gives them maximum real estate for the downtube and chainstays to go wide.
Tucked behind the cranks is their 3S chain keeper.
The frame is DuoTrap compatible, blending their speed and cadence sensors into the chainstay.
The lack of hidden fender mounts like on the Domane suggest this is a more race oriented edition.
The SLX’s dark blue paint is infused with Trek’s See Glass, essentially finely ground glass blended with the paint for a whole ‘nutha level of sparkle in the sun. It’s gorgeous in person.
The Silque SL will come in a black/white/fuschia color scheme with 4-series coding. Both appeared to have Bontrager’s tubeless ready Race wheels, but standard R3 tires. More as we get it.
