I’ve heard many mentions of compromises with riding gravel bikes on the road (with or without a tire swap), but I don’t know how it translates in real life for a non competitive rider.
I feel like geo / handling and aerodynamics are the two main mentioned compromises with standards a distant 3rd. Anything I’m missing?
Geometry and handling:
For tire swaps, I understand pneumatic trail changes with tire size, but I don’t understand why I would care. With a slacker head tube on a gravel bike, I assume a smaller tire brings it more back inline with road bikes.
I have no issues riding my very-high-trail MTB on roads, and my old road bike is obviously fine on roads too (though I generally prefer the less twitchy mtb).
I don’t really need the super short chain stays and weight out over the front wheel position for road riding. I understand some like that and there may be aero advantages, but it doesn’t seem necessary for casual / fondo / group rides.
Aerodynamics:
Seems like some gravel frames give up very little, but most are pretty un aero. I’ve never ridden an aero bike, am I really missing out on experience or just speed?
Standards:
I’m not super fussed about q factor or bike standards. MTB spacings would make my life a little easier from a spares perspective. If I got a gravel bike, I’d likely run a 40T or similar for road riding and maybe a 34 or 36 for gravel. I understand it’d be nice to clear like a 48 or 50 for some gentle descents in a group
Thanks all!
For context: I am considering updating my 20+ year old road bike for a gravel bike. I currently use it occasionally for a mix of charity type road rides, commuting, group rides, light gravel rides, and training rides on the road. I mainly ride my XC MTB
Seems to me that you know the answer on this one. While I am currently running separate gravel, road and MTB, if I were to give up one of those bikes it would be the road bike, and I only got the road bike for racing.
Handling/geo: much is made about this, but I would say that many would prefer the slightly slower handling of gravel bike geo vs what is considered road geometry. Gravel bikes on long road descents are good. If I can use a car analogy, a road bike is the sports car, but the gravel bike can be like the stupidly fast SUV that seems to do everything as fast but the steering doesn’t feel as direct.
Aero: there are some nice fast aero gravel bikes, this depends on how ‘adventure’ you go.
Fun factor: gravel bikes kill road bikes for the simple fact that you will jump into fun little off road sections.
Trail change with different tyres: you would probably go 32mm minimum with road tyres on MTB, but we have some of the Vittoria 42mm Corsa tyres on gravel bikes in my house and they are fast. So far road tyres fix that.
The only thing I would say is that if you want a gravel bike to do road and gravel, if you want it to feel fast on road then go a more racy style bike, an adventure gravel bike with really slack front end feels pretty unresponsive in corners
I’m about five years in to having one nice/fast bike that could be called allroad or gravel by a reasonable person. Two wheelsets (700c with 35mm slicks, 650b with 2.1” knobbies). I have never had an issue with handling caused by trail, and it’s because the designer did a good job building around a range of tire sizes that the rider stuck to. The bike is not aero at all. It has round metal tubes! Round! And the stack is endurance road bike ish. Which is to say comfortable. Would I ride a four corner crit with it? No. It has manners. But the manners mostly make it feel planted and non-fatiguing on long rides. I live in flatland, so YMMV but this strategy has worked very well and I see no downsides. If anything my hands and back appreciate the tire clearance on our bad roads.
Sometimes it’s best to just believe in yourself and your experience. Everyone has different riding conditions and time. What works for you? Budget? When you boil it down, what’s different? The Canyon Grail is pretty racy. Pro road riders now use 1x. What works for you? I’m turning 60 this year, I’m not riding pro-stylez low stack, period. Do you care if you’re fast? Racing? Nobody can know but you. Pick what’s comfortable and that you enjoy. Do miles. Ignore marketing.
Riding a well-fitted Aero bike is indeed a wonderful experience but it’s only one of the many rad experiences you can have on a bike. It sounds like you’re looking for a bike that’s optimised for your enjoyment. If that enjoyment includes racing (or race-ish riding) then maybe aero is an important consideration, otherwise I’d probably put it fairly low on the list of considerations.
One thing to bear in mind when looking at using a gravel bike on the road is gearing. There’s a whole bunch of compromises to be made around range/spacing/chain retention that may or may not be a big deal depending on your terrain and riding style. When my gravel bike was dual purpose road/gravel for me I had different wheels/cassettes for road/off and 9.5 times out of 10 I could not be bothered swapping and readjusting so ended up just riding whatever terrain was dictated by how I found the bike in my garage.
One challenge is that I don’t really even know what I’m missing. Definitely riding for enjoyment not racing, but there’s some aspect of “fast is fun”. Otherwise, I’d just ride my MTB on pavement.
I’m concerned an adventure gravel bike might just feel like my MTB on the road when what I think I’d hope for is a less twitchy road bike .
And also wondering if I’m missing another big step like from mtb speed to road speed with aero or aeroish bikes. Or like swapping gatorskins to gp5000s. That something super noticeable both in pure speed and ride quality
I use a Giant Revolt as my road bike. The fit is much better for me than almost all road bikes. I have Reserve 42/49 TA wheels, running gp5000 32s or 35s AS in winter. I’ll go to the 35s in summer too now that they are available.
I do long distance, no racing. Sportives, Alps holidays and enjoying my riding and I have no reason to get anything else. My only concern is now gravel bikes are evolving and may end up racier or more adventure again.
The delta between your MTB and a road bike, pretty much any half OK road bike, is significantly, massively greater than the delta between a good road bike and a full blown road race bike.
So, having a road bike or speed leaning gravel bike as well as an MTB makes total sense. Having a road bike as well as a performance leaning gravel bike that’s also decent on the road is definitely more along the lines of ‘just because’.
As per another commenter above, I have a gravel bike that is great with 650/27.5 x 55/2.2, and will be equally great with 700x35/40 slicks. I choose to have a road bike too because I like the fact it’s noticably lighter, and I do like slightly different geo and handlebars on the two bikes, but if I could only have one, it would be the gravel bike with two wheelsets.
Also check BB height. Many gravel bikes have significant Bb drop. That doesn’t bother because the large tires make sure there is enough ground clearance at all times. If you put in like 32mm tires, you should pay a bit more attention to your pedals during high speed corners.
Having said no, I don’t really need a road bike as well as a gravel bike, but have one because I can, there is one issue that for me maybe means I do need a road bike as well as gravel bike.
Gear range … I need vastly different gearing on the gravel bike compared to the road bike.
My gravel riding is basically what MTB riding was back in 90s, or perhaps could be described as MTB marathon light, so lots of very steep stuff, and any gravel traversed at road bike speeds is fast descending where the best thing to do is to just freewheel, hold on and enjoy the ride.
The road bike is quite low geared too, because hills, and I’m not especially powerful, but the gearing is higher than the gravel bike, and with closer spacing.
Gravel bike - 36t chainring with 10-50t cassette, meaning the max speed I can pedal at is not much over 30 mph, but I can climb walls.
Road bike - 47-32 chainrings with 11-36t cassette.
If your gravel riding is road riding, but on gravel, meaning the same gearing could be used for both, then one bike for both will be just fine.
I will point out that several folks are indicating they attracted to gravel bikes for the sane stack/reach numbers.
A road bike with sane stack/reach numbers and 40 mm tire clearance might be the actual thing they want (think Fairlight Strael with T geometry). It’s pity there aren’t more carbon options.
I will point out that several folks are indicating they attracted to gravel bikes for the sane stack/reach numbers.
A road bike with sane stack/reach numbers and 40 mm tire clearance might be the actual thing they want (think Fairlight Strael with T geometry). It’s pity there aren’t more carbon options.
And there are those that would suggest a road bike with that kind of stack and reach and 40mm tires is a gravel bike in all but name.
It’s fair to say that there is now to some degree a fair region of overlap, where a proportion of gravel bikes are just road bikes with big tyre clearance, and a proportion of road bikes are just gravel bikes with fairly minimal (for gravel) tyre clearance.
As with many of these sorts of questions, there is a lot of nuance and personal preference. Both “gravel bike” and “road bike” are broad categories, and for any given aspect (such as geometry), their venn diagrams overlap, whilst the extremes may be further apart. Similarly, the way different riders use them is very different: someone who races crits and someone doing a long distance off road bikepacking trip probably want very different products; someone doing endurance road riding with some bad roads/light gravel probably wants something different again (and this person is more likely to be in the zone of the venn diagram where road and gravel bikes overlap).
I suspect you’re in the latter camp. You would probably be well suited to either a gravel bike that is closer to the road end of the spectrum, or a road bike that leans towards the gravel end of the spectrum (indeed, the “all road” segment is now a class of its own, which is probably ideal for you, although not every brand has adopted that moniker).
I generally agree but that’s more where grave bikes were at a few years ago. An increasing number of gravel bikes are going slack head tube angle, long trail, long chainstays, and even 1x only.
The “older” style gravel bikes were pretty decent road bikes. The “newer” style gravel bikes not as much because of the geometry changes that make them more off road capable. Gravel bikes is a broad term though.
When I’m riding my gravel bike(Niner RLT RDO) on the road, I enjoy the stability, especially on bad pavement. The quicker response of a pure road bike can be fun, but if I had to choose one it’d be the gravel bike.
Yes, and no. There is no such thing as a gravel bike, because gravel covers a huge spectrum, so while some gravel bikes have headed into MTB geo territory, not all have gone that way. And some road bikes are also taking some inspiration from gravel and MTB too (steeper seat tube and longer reach).
At this point many gravel bikes, and especially race focused or performance leaning gravel bikes are still close enough to road bike geo that they are essentially the same, so long as they are ridden with bigger volume slicks if in road mode.
Fairlight are a great example of how close road and gravel can be. Their Secan is amazing off-road (I set a couple of trail CRs on mine on the very first ride, beating times set on MTBs), but has geo that is extremely similar to their award winning Strael road bike.
And while geeks like myself may notice and care about a gravel bike not handling like a road bike when fitted with slicks and ridden on pavement, many won’t notice/know the difference, or care.
I’ve been riding “gravel” bike on the road with 35+ tires for almost 10 years at this point. I never really bought into the idea that you need a road bike and a gravel bike. With the way geo’s have evolved you can find pretty fun and snappy ‘gravel’ bikes that still provide you clearance, stack/reach, and handling you may want. I am riding 40mm+ tires now full time, with 1x gearing. It works for me, i feel comfortable, and it’s better than managing multiple bikes/wheels/etc.
Focus on the bike you want that suits your needs and just roll with that. If it’s something like a Fairlight, dope. If it’s something like an Enve Mog, dope.
This, 100% this. I recently put some 35s on my Chebacco (2nd Gen) and its So. Much. Fun. Ok because this frame has a slightly higher BB (70mm) because its an older model its like riding a ‘regular’ road bike whatever that means nowadays! : ) I think buying a versatile frame that can take some knobby tires when you really want to go off road as well as some slicks for when you want to go ‘fast’ is the way to go for most people. I love my aero bike (Propel) but its all grimaces in pursuit of speed with that bike, whereas the Chebacco is all smiles, every time, no matter what the set up or where the road goes.
