For those of you that have added gravel bike to your stable, has it been able to truely replace your road bike?
I’m not talking about it just replacing your time on a bike in that you’d rather ride your gravel rig or rather ride on gravel than road. But do you feel like you can use your gravel bike and still put up performances close to your road bike. i.e. still performing just the same on road races, crits, strava climbs and sprints, etc. If so, what was your road bike and gravel bike?
I’ve pretty much been on my Exploro exclusively since I bought it. I like the versatility of the frame, can take 650b/700c and can run 1x/2x. I have 650b Byways mounted and can pretty much go anywhere I want and I’m still fast enough to hang with others on road bikes.
I’ve also just picked up a set of 56mm deep 30mm wide wheels for more road focused rides.
If I didn’t have a special bond with my SuperSix Evo Hi-MOD I think I could live with the Exploro as my only bike.
I have a fast handling aero road bike with rim brakes and a slowish handling gravel/CX bike with disc brakes.
Vast difference in feel between the two.
I would never do road race types events on the gravel/CX bike… the handling would be all wrong.
No!
While the Exploro is about as close as you can get to a true dual use bike, it is still compromised and pretty darn expensive. Get a decent gravel and a decent road bike, rather than a bike that is great at neither.
Yep.
I have an Open U.P. and that and my MTB are the only bikes that go outside. My Cervelo S3 is my trainer bike now…!
I only have a single wheelset for the Open at the moment so chose to go with 700c 35mm front & 50mm rear rims as I’m still a bit of an aero nerd. I’m running Compass Snoqualmies (not aero at 44mm!!) as a goldilocks tyre for now. With that setup I lose nothing on all but the most brutal of bunch rides and yet it remains incredibly capable off road. I had a ride recently where I beat my previous time on a 17min road climb, and later on the ride on a gravel climb also got a few 2nd best times and I wasn’t trying to beat any previous times. The Open is faster than I’ll ever be whether on-road or off-road.
All of the times and what not are a bit irrelevant though really. The fact that I can comfortably do a ride of 140km where it was 50/50 on-road and off-road is the awesome part. No way I could do that on the S3 with such ease. The Open is just so versatile.
i.e. still performing just the same on road races, crits, strava climbs and sprints, etc
Quite simply a gravel bike isn’t going to perform just the same as a top end road bike in the scenarios you list. Assuming you fit comparable wheels/tires, then you’re still giving up 1-2kg weight, aero on the bike, aero on the rider position (gravel bikes have a more relaxed geometry) and a little bit on handling as well if it’s a race with technical sections. Not big differences, and they wouldn’t really matter at all if you were out on a club ride competing for fun and bragging rights. But if it’s a race and you want your best performance then those small differences might just be the difference between getting in a break, winning a sprint, or being first over the hill and…not.
But you’re kind of missing the point. Gravel bikes are never going to match the racing performance of a top road bike, but what they can do is give you >95% of that performance (which if you’re not a bike racer is close enough that it will never really matter) while also being able to go places that a top road bike simply can’t handle.
For those of you that have added gravel bike to your stable, has it been able to truely replace your road bike?
I’m not talking about it just replacing your time on a bike in that you’d rather ride your gravel rig or rather ride on gravel than road. But do you feel like you can use your gravel bike and still put up performances close to your road bike. i.e. still performing just the same on road races, crits, strava climbs and sprints, etc. If so, what was your road bike and gravel bike?
Replace my road bike? No…but, then again, I have quite a bit of “overlap” between the capabilities of the 2, especially since my road bike will fit tires measuring up to 30mm wide in the rear (and even larger in the fork)…so I find myself using the road bike for “light gravel” duty" anyway. So, if anything, my road bike strays more into “gravel” use than my gravel bike strays into more pavement-centric use.
I’ll grab the “gravel bike” when I know I’ll be riding a significantly higher percentage of off-pavement than what I prefer to tackle on the “road bike”.
Not completely replaced, but for about 7 months out of the year it has. The other 5 months it’s mixed – only using the road bike for dry weather paved-only rides.
Sort of. I only had a TT bike (Trek Equinox), stopped doing tris, sold the TT and got into gravel two years ago. Any ride I do whether its on road or gravel it is on my gravel. Gravel bike is a motobecane cross bike.
I don’t do road races or crits, but I do strava and I don’t have the speed of the TT but I don’t care that much really.
For those of you that have added gravel bike to your stable, has it been able to truely replace your road bike?
I’m not talking about it just replacing your time on a bike in that you’d rather ride your gravel rig or rather ride on gravel than road. But do you feel like you can use your gravel bike and still put up performances close to your road bike. i.e. still performing just the same on road races, crits, strava climbs and sprints, etc. If so, what was your road bike and gravel bike?
“Replace”? I have bikes that serve very overlapping purposes, but they exist alongside each other.
For instance, I have two traditional road bikes with bright red color schemes and no fenders, which filled a similar price point and purpose on their respective catalogs… but one I bought new in 2015, and the other is a 1983 bike that I picked up in 2016. I use them on the same sorts of rides. They’re very different, but perhaps their similarities make their contrast more interesting.
My gravel bike - or the closest thing I have to a gravel bike - is a pretty weird monstrosity, a drop-bar conversion of a 1984 Stumpjumper. The road fit handles very strangely with the high trail and ridiculously-long chainstays, and it’s a cheap and very heavy build. It’s nearly always running 53mm slicks and full-length fenders, which when combined with the geometry, gives an aesthetic impression similar to a beach cruiser. But it’s more capable on the road than it looks, and as silly as it is, I still sometimes ride it on spirited road rides.
Although its extreme weight gives it a huge disadvantage on climbs compared with my Emonda (about 6-7% slower), on the flats I tend to get performance pretty similar to my traditional road bikes. For both solo and group riding, there are plenty of road segments where my best efforts have been on the Stumpy.
If I had to slash down my stable to a single drop-bar bike, I’d probably end up keeping some kind of gravel bike around. But I’d still use it for spirited road rides, and I probably wouldn’t think of it as “not a road bike.”
Actually . . . my gravel bike replaced my TT bike. I realized that I only rode my TT bike for two or three races per year – and I knew I would get a lot more use out of a gravel bike. So, I sold the TT bike and bought the gravel bike.
As for my road bike? It’s a lot faster than my gravel bike on the road, so I use it whenever I want to go fast on pavement. For triathlon this year, I plan to put aero bars on the road bike.
Yes, in a sense.
Before I bought a CX bike,my only bike was my TT bike and it got used on all road rides, social and training. I bought a CX bike. I use it’s stock setup for CX races and gravel rides, and use a different road disc wheelset on it for shorter more social road riding. I still use the TT bike for longer solo training session type road rides.
Assuming you fit comparable wheels/tires, then you’re still giving up 1-2kg weight, aero on the bike, aero on the rider position (gravel bikes have a more relaxed geometry) and a little bit on handling as well if it’s a race with technical sections.
The Open UP weighs 1430 grams while the higher-end UPPER weighs 1250 grams. A Cervelo R3 disc frameset weighs 1380 grams. So you can find and make a gravel bike weigh the same as a good road bike. As far as geometry goes, the stack and reach of the large Open bikes is 580 and 387. For a 58cm Cervelo R3 they are 605 and 396. So you could argue that the Cervelo is actually a bit more relaxed.
As for handling,GP Lama interviewed a guy on youtube who was gushing about the handling of his Open UPPER and said it was comparable to his Cervelo. That got me wondering how much you are actually giving up going from say a $5k road bike to a $5k gravel bike. Is the performance difference enough that you don’t think you can challenge the same Strava climb or sprint times you had on the road bike?
So I figure I’d start a thread to see other peoples opinions. This was my point, hopefully I didn’t miss the point of my thread.
Replace my road bike? No…but, then again, I have quite a bit of “overlap” between the capabilities of the 2, especially since my road bike will fit tires measuring up to 30mm wide in the rear (and even larger in the fork)…so I find myself using the road bike for “light gravel” duty" anyway.
This is part of what got me thinking about it. I’ve got a road bike (which fits 28mm) and a gravel bike (ok fine…it’s a cross bike). I do some dirt roads and light gravel on the road bike (just being careful about picking my lines) - I have to hold back enough that if I think I’m going to ride a route with a decent amount of gravel I’ll choose the grave/cross bike. But I don’t like riding that one as much since it’s not as fast or zippy. I don’t like that I have overlap between bikes. I’d rather just have one bike that I have to maintain, store, etc. But I really like my road bike and my current gravel/cross rig doesn’t hold a candle when it comes to sprints or climbs. But it’s comparing apples to oranges. The road bike is 3 lbs lighter, carbon, newer model, yada yada. So part of me wants to sell both of them and just get one bike that handles/climbs/sprints as well as an R3 or midlevel Tarmac but can fit 35-ish mm tires.
Mostly wondering if anyone has found some bikes they feel fit this bill
temporary yes… (ordered 2019 BMC Time Machine Road)
My gravel bike “could” be pretty light… frame is 960g with a 400g fork. I have lots of weightweenie parts to put on it and I did initially , but now it’s a fat pig with things like a suspension stem and suspension seat post and Aluminum 650b wheels with some overweight ballons for tires. Oh but it works for its intended purpose very well and looks sharp.
Yes it has - but only because I took my DuraAce C50 Tubulars and paired them with 35mm Vittoria XG’s. The bike has near road bike “feel” but can go anywhere and has mad grip!
The frame is a decently spec’d custom USA-made Spooky, so it had great riding feel to start with. I went with the SRAM wifli, 12-32 cassette with 50/34. The performance and fun-factor is awesome, esp for under $1000.
Last year I sold off 5 bikes. But am thinking about getting another road bike just to back up my SRAM E-tap that is on the P5X. I can buy a full bike with Etap for the ~ price of the new or used group-set.
<https://www.instagram.com/p/Br9KQtlllbC/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet
For those of you that have added gravel bike to your stable, has it been able to truely replace your road bike?
I’m not talking about it just replacing your time on a bike in that you’d rather ride your gravel rig or rather ride on gravel than road. But do you feel like you can use your gravel bike and still put up performances close to your road bike. i.e. still performing just the same on road races, crits, strava climbs and sprints, etc. If so, what was your road bike and gravel bike?
For me, the gravel-type bike completely eliminated the road bike slot in my stable pretty quickly after I stopped doing road races and didn’t have access to or desire to participate in competitive group rides (plus living in Colorado in the past gave me access to great gravel riding). There’s maybe 2 times a year I really want a road-specific bike, so it’s not worth the investment, storage, and maintenance for me to have one. If someone is really serious about crits, strava segments, etc, they’re probably better off on a “real” road bike with the associated handling (and probably lighter weight, and potentially aero properties).
There is no official definition for what a gravel bike actually is, so the lines can kind of get blurry on the fringes. I’m working on a new bike now that’s kind of a fat-tire road bike, like what you saw at Parix-Roubaix 10 years ago. Mid-reach road caliper brakes and clearance for 32mm tires. So it’s kind of between what’s now called a road bike and a gravel bike.
As it turns out I’ve never actually owned a road bike. My first ever bike purchase was a 2009 Focus Mares CX I got used off craigslist and I treated it like a road bike until this past year. Since 100% of my training is on my TT bike now, I put 34mm cross tires on the focus and I commute and ride trails with it. If I were to do a crit or a group ride I would just throw my slicks back on it. Sure I would love a nice road bike but my next purchase will be a new TT bike so I think I’ll be in this gravel bike only situation for awhile. It works great!
Yup, Open UPPER that’s just slightly heavier than my Canyon Ultimate SLX. I ride the Open everywhere (two wheelsets) and while it’s not as quick as a pure road bike like SLX, it’d be more than sufficient to race, IMO.
Sorry, just reread my reply and wasn’t particularly helpful!
To your original question, the answer is that yes a gravel bike can be very nearly as good as a road bike if you set it up that way. Not sure that the Open bikes are typical of the gravel bike category though - they’ve deliberately gone with road racing geometry with more tire clearance, whereas the gravel offerings from the manufacturers that also have road bikes tend to be more relaxed. That might be a marketing thing though and we’ll see more convergence of the categories. Also worth noting that aero bikes these days have more aggressive geometry than a more traditional road bike like the R3. At the road races I do, nearly everybody seems to have made the switch to aero road bikes.
I guess for me I’d rather have a few different bikes that are optimised for different purposes. So I wouldn’t really see the point of buying a gravel bike and then setting it up to be as good as possible at road racing, I’d want it set to be an all-rounder, and then have a road bike that is optimised for racing. Wheels can be easily switched (though I’m increasingly lazy as I get older and much prefer just picking up a bike and heading out the door, not messing around changing wheels), but other things are harder. E.g. for an all-rounder I ride a less aggressive position, I want a wider range of gearing, and I favour robustness and reliability in my components over performance and light weight. Appreciate that other people have different priorities.