Types of road bike: Your drop-bar options unpacked

What is a road bike? Well, that’s a bit trickier to pin down than you might think. At first glance, you’d probably picture a bike with skinny tyres and drop handlebars riding along smooth roads. While this is largely accurate, most road bikes do have drop bars, there are plenty of exceptions. 

Take time trial bikes, for instance. They’re built for speed, aerodynamics, and efficiency, but they still fall under the road bike category. Then, you have flat-bar road bikes, which blur the lines even more, but the truth is many flat-bar bikes designed for road riding often get categorized as hybrid bikes.