Introducing: Focus Paralane
Focus has introduced a new endurance road model to it’s lineup: the Paralane. Rather than stick with the trend of ever more narrowly defined niche versions of road bikes, endurance road; or gravel road; or fondo, or… Focus had decided to replace ‘or’ with ‘and.’ Take the Paralane on your favorite road loop, and the watershed loop, and your favorite gravel connectors, and … whatever else you can think of, really. Focus takes advantage of their tradition producing blazing fast road bikes, like their purebred race tuned Izalco, and mixes in key details that give the Paralane surprising flexibility. The result is a bike that you can ride anywhere, but which keeps its race bike feel instead of feeling like a rental beach cruiser when you’re back on the tarmac.
The Paralane has been receiving impressively positive reviews across the board, and it’s not hard to see why. Focus has put the time in to design a well thought out go anywhere bike, not just slapped some novelty rubber inserts in and call it a ‘gravel road’ bike. Anywhere you look on the impressively light frame, the Paralane has another detail designed for it’s purpose: go fast, go anywhere. These range from the relatively straight forward, to the less visible and more elegant details that really make the bike stand out.
Focus has hit all the key points: flat mount disc brakes, their R.A.T. through-axle wheels, a narrower seat post for comfort, a lightly sloped top tube for better standover clearance, and replaceable internal cable ports for Di2 compatibility. But that’s just the start. They’ve borrowed the flex-stay technology developed for their Raven XC to make the Paralane’s back end noticeably more forgiving on rougher roads. Most impressively, though, is their solution to the often cartoonishly tall head tubes that give other endurance bikes a distinct upright, city-bike look. Instead, Focus dropped the Paralane’s BB, gave it a more normal looking head tube, and put the extra room into the fork crown. The outcome? A race bike look, with massive clearance for cyclocross sized 35c tyres.
Knowing that an all-conditions go anywhere bike would inevitably face more than its fair share of adverse weather conditions, Focus collaborated with Belgian fender company Curana to create an impressively elegant integrated fender system for the Paralane. The removable fenders use tiny built in eyelets on the drop outs, and the rear fender uses a removable fender bridge arch that locks in between the seat stays. This gives the Paralane an easy, reliable fender system that you know will work with those massive tyres you want to run all winter.
With the wet weather starting to show it’s face here on the West Coast, now is the time to drop by and check out the Paralane in person, or take it out for a ride!
