After 18 months of riding my Giant Defy on rural UK roads (for those unfamiliar - think rough, broken surfaces, loose chippings, potholes and tarmac in various states of repair) I'm starting to think that a Specialized Roubaix with its 20 mm of front suspension could just be the ideal "UK" road bike. My Defy copes quite well with it's D-fuse seatpost and bars, but our local rural roads are now getting so badly worn that it really has no chance of smoothing them out. The back end of the Defy is actually quite acceptable on these roads, but the front often gets a proper hammering. Yesterday I hit a pothole at speed that jarred my wrist quite badly and can't have been good for the poor headset and wheels. A bit of front suspension would have taken the sting out of it for sure. Obviously I don't deliberately ride over potholes, but if you ride 100 miles on these roads you will inevitably hit a few of them! But apart from potholes, the road surfaces themselves are pretty rough, certainly nothing like the smooth tarmac you see on European alpine roads.

This is the kind of road I'm talking about:-



So any thoughts on the latest Roubaix with Future Shock 2.0 and Pave seatpost? Is it a noticeable improvement over a more conventional "endurance" bike? How is the bike overall? How does it compare with say a Trek Domane?

Notes:
1. Before anyone suggests a gravel bike, I don't want to go that far into off-road territory (I own plenty of full suss mtbs and not interested in riding fireroads etc) and the roads I ride are not ALL as bad as the one pictured above. What I want is a fast road bike that can cope with this kind of terrain.
2. I'm running tubeless 32c tyres, which seem like a reasonable compromise between speed/comfort. I don't want to go any wider than that