First drop bar road bike - advice sought

[north woods gal]

Plus one on the Trek WSD models. Back when I was riding drop bars, my Trek Domane 4.3 (carbon/105) WSD was the first bike in all my years of riding that actually fit me with no mods needed.

I do like carbon frames on road bikes and if you're like most roadies, sooner or later, you'll go carbon. That is NOT to say that a well-deigned aluminum frame is a slouch. Have has some truly excellent aluminum frame drop bar bikes.

Absolutely spot on with 105 as a minimum. That's a no brainer. 105 may not be butter smooth like Ultegra, but I've literally ridden tens of thousands of miles on 105 with never a single breakdown.

What Sheila says about making the change over to drop bars is correct. Your body will need time to adjust to the different riding position. There may be some aches and pains along the way, but in time you'll adjust, as Shelia mentions, and be in a much better position to evaluate the subtle differences between the models and their geometries. In fact, I recently switched over to mainly trail riding/rough unpaved backwoods road riding with the MTBs and flat bar bikes, so sold off my drop bar bikes because switching back and forth was getting uncomfortable with the drop bar bikes from not riding them on a regular basis. But if it's pavement, and you want to really want to put in the big miles, a drop bar is the way to go.