Gravel bike4/30/2023 If you have any strong recommendations for bikes which are comfortable in the long haul and great value builds I would be very grateful for any advice you could offer. I have looked into the Niner RLT in steel but at an estimated $5200 it is very expensive due to very limited CDN distribution. A bike which could handle wider tires than most cross bikes would be also be great. I already have a cross bike, but I am looking for a new ride suited for long days of riding gravel, trails and races like the D2R2. As experienced experts, I would appreciate any recommendations you have have for a great gravel bike. Paul: Hi – I would consider your club the authority on hard core gravel riding. In this case, when Paul de Swart emailed, I figured I might as well save my response and use if for a post. I get a regular influx of emails and messages about gravel and cyclocross bikes, wheels, and tires, and I always take time to respond thoroughly. In Socratic fashion, we’ll use key questions to orient the process. In this initial post, we’ll look at how to start the thought process of selecting a gravel bike. Where does it end? I’ll provide my view in the final installment of this three-part series. Does this sound like a familiar story? See ‘mountain bike evolution’ and ‘fat bike evolution.’ More volume is l’ordre du jour in most categories, from road (23mm to 25mm), MTB (2.3″ to 3″), fat bike (4″ to 5″), and ‘gravel’ (28mm to 40mm). However, as riders have pushed their bikes harder and further on unpaved surfaces, they’ve, we’ve asked for more tire volume. While 10 years ago a ‘dirt road’ bike could easily have set up with 30mm tires for events like D2R2. Spoiler, paint doesn’t matter.īefore we jump in, one last insight worth mentioning: ‘gravel’ events and plain ol’ riding is evolving, in part because the technology being made available is changing, and riders are asking for more from producers putting equipment onto the market. I am going to talk about what matters in a ‘gravel bike’ for people who are going to ride them, either sometimes, a lot, or somewhere in the middle. But my target audience here is the rider who wants to make an informed decision about what sort of bike to get to meet their actual or intended riding needs. “Oh, there’s a new kind of bike I can add to my stable? Cool, what should I get?” If you want to buy a ‘gravel bike’ for the sake of having a gravel bike, what follows probably won’t be relevant to you. Unlike coffee tables, watches and cutlery, there is no ‘this bike part/frame will last me for LIFE!’ Instead, there are life-cycles, and decisions to be made about when to retire equipment (if anyone can point me to the life-cycle chart one of the component brands put out a while ago to inform these decisions, please let me know can’t find it!), and what to replace it with.Įnter ‘gravel riding.’ For some, a new gravel bike will fall into the N+1 stream, ‘N’ being the current number of bikes owned, ‘1’ the next new bike. I say all this to point to the fact that riding bikes, and riding bikes a lot in particular, means that bringing more bike stuff into our lives is necessary in order to keep riding. I can tell you from experience, this is wise. ![]() So bikes, and virtually every component that comprise them, have finite lifespans, or ‘life-cycles.’ It’s really good to know how long your bike parts were designed to last, and retire them before they fail. If bike companies built bikes that didn’t break with today’s (affordable) materials, nobody would want to ride them they would feel horrible. ![]() I’ve personally seen plenty of reputable titanium bikes crack. “Whoa, bomb-proof!” We figured that justified its massive sticker price the bike would never break! My brother walked out with an entry-level Cannondale M400, which he enjoyed for a few years before upgrading to a Catamount full suspension bike, possibly one of the worst riding bikes of the 1990s.Īnyhow, titanium bikes break, just like bikes made out of every material known to humankind. “Oh, that’s titanium it’s BOMB-PROOF!” said the salesman. ![]() “What’s this one?” he asked, pointing at a titanium bike on a pedestal. I’ll never forget the day I was at BikeWay with my older brother sometime around 1994, as he shopped for a new mountain bike, his first from a bike shop instead of a department store.
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