Geek Warning Bonus: Trek on testing gravel suspension and bike design

Today, Trek launched a bike that’s sure to spark debate in comments sections. It’s called the CheckOut. It features a new 60 mm travel front suspension fork, courtesy of the RockShox Rudy XL, and 55 mm rear travel to match. It fits gravel-width cranks and has official clearance for up to 56 mm tyres (about a 29x2.25in).However, it’s the design and testing of this bike that brings our fascination up to a boiling point. Trek published a white paper explaining how it used a rolling road with 3D motion capture, on bike sensors, and a metabolic mask to understand the benefits of having suspension on typical gravel terrain. We had questions.So with that, Alex Bedinghaus (Lead Design Engineer) and Kyle Russ (Analysis team) jumped on to geek out with Escape's Dave Rome. The conversation covers the design of the bike, what modern off-road efficiency testing looks like, why gravel bikes continue to go where mountain bikes have been, and plenty more.Meanwhile, head over to Escape Collective.com to see Dave Rome’s early coverage of the new Check Out.Those on the free feed for Geek Warning get the first 25 minutes free. Meanwhile, members of Escape Collective get the whole thing, which frankly, includes the best parts.Time stamps:3:00 - Introductions6:00 - The design goal of the CheckOut10:00 - Why not a mountain bike?15:30 - Designing for bikepacking20:00 - Longer suspension and stack heights25:00 - Suspension layout versus Trek’s IsoTrust27:00 - Testing explained (Escape Members Only from here on)35:00 - Body is a damper and a spring37:00 - Suspension versus bigger tyres44:00 - Measuring steering compensation49:00 - Qualitative versus quantitative data53:30 - Is smoother always faster?57:00 - CheckOut versus a gravel race bike