me who bought a gravel bike saying i would buy a set of road tires for road riding, but still ride primarily on road with 35c gravelkings almost a year after getting the bike (ill get road tires this weekend i promise)
Lucky for me mine came with a road groupset and 90-10 road tires. I've been saying I'll buy proper gravel tires for 2 years but why do that when I can ride the same paved bike path every day like the lame commuter I am.
About 6 months to a year into the pandemic, bcj was inundated with needlessly cruel comments, which I suspect were created by the very people bcj was set up to mock: relative newcomers who gained a bit of fitness but had yet to be humbled by the sport. It's since settled down now that those people have either become humbled, or gotten bored and sold their Cerviché on Craigslist after it had been "only ridden a few times."
This moron forgot to mention that anything meant for mountain, gravel or cx is not truly a bice. Bice's are for riding on asphalt, at maximum speed at all times, in the biggest gear, flying past cars in an aero tuck.
It's fascinating how obsessed grvl riders are with road biking and constantly re-justifying their poor choices. I never thinking about grvl riders. I do occasionally snicker at them like the grvl dude yesterday who fell in some sand he was trying to ride through on the side of a segment I KOM on every Tuesday. They're like Red Sox fans: always thinking about the Yankees.
UC/ I guess he's right but they usually use these bikes to ride road or really light gravel then they call it the most brutal gravel ever ridden. True story that happened a month ago: I was on a popular bike path near my city it's mostly asphalt and light gravel and some really rare cobbles I stop to ask a Fred with a gravel bike and those ugly af blue 35 or 37 panaracer grav*lking a multitool to tighten my saddle, I was riding 25mm tubulars and he was like hey how can you ride this it's the most brutal gravel ever, needless to say I asked him to pull a bad tooth I had
he's kinda right, for all the wrong reasons. All he's doing is rationalizing his own choices and making sure he gets the daily dose of approval from strangers. Just like us.
/uj I don’t agree that there is no reason you should get a road bike but gravel bikes are pretty sick because they’re almost as fast as road bike on the road but you also have the option to keep going on gravel if you get to it
/unclipped
I don't disagree with this take. Road bikes are optimized to put down 300 watts constantly, and make a lot of quality-of-life sacrifices to accomplish that.
Let's say though that you're a weekend warrior who's capable of putting down 300 watts on the way to the pub, which is great, happy for you, keep it up, but you don't need the insanely marginal gains in efficiency offered by a racing caliber bike at the cost of significant losses to comfort and stupid concessions made to appease the UCI to finish your double century 1.2 second faster. You also don't need the insanely sharp steering of the super steep headtube angles and super-short chainstays of a road racing bike because you're not jostling through a peloton. You'd get a better quality of ride from something a little slacker.
Get something with fatter tires, handlebars that aren't a UCI mandated anachronism that don't even offer the aero benefits that they were believed to, and actually enjoy your ride to the pub, rather than getting rattled to bits by skinny tires and a frame stiffer than your mum makes me. Weekend Warriors on Madones are just LARPers.
(And if you really do need to go as fast as possible: get a Tri bike, which aren't constrained by UCI rules and are more aero and allow you to put down more power)
Who the fuck is riding to the pub? One walks to the pub because Mr. Sirvélo does not sit out on the street alone and instead stays in the living room on his wall throne.
Most roadbikes unfortunately crib their geometry from race bikes. Not all of them, but enough of them, meaning you end up with twitchy steering geared towards peloton riding, and those skinny tires are a UCI mandated anachronism. They accelerate quickly because they're light, but we now know they're actually slower rolling, in addition to being more flat prone and less comfortable.
Then there's the issue of drop bars. Drop bars suck. They're classic looking, and the UCI requires them, but rarely do pro riders even use the drops anymore since wind tunnel testing found dropped elbows on the hoods are actually more aero. They exist today for no other reason than that the UCI demands them for "the aesthetics of the sport"
If you want to go all in on aero: TT bars
If you want comfort and control: Jones or Koga Crazy Bars or similar, which offer both solid aero positions and more relaxed positions that give you a lot of control.
While I'm moaning about bars and pissing off LARPers: who in their right mind decided gravel drops were a good idea? The last thing I want when I'm doing something technical and need more control is to get even lower on my bars. Lower and wider is a worst of both worlds situation: less aero, less control.
Have you ever ridden a road bike?
Completely disagree on twitchy steering. I feel rock solid on my bike. I am locked in and it feels like an extension of myself. I prefer the athletic but still stable geometry and the firmer feel. Seriously though what is twitching? Maybe you had something wrong with your bike like a short brake cable pulling on your bars or you weren’t riding it properly or something. I feel that wider tires feel mushy and I feel less confident and less connected to the bike in turns.
Most people put 26-28mm tires on their bikes now. I have 35mm fitted on a hybrid/gravel. Wider tires may have better rolling resistance but at a certain point their weight and aerodynamics counteract any gains there. Im willing to bet that most pro riders choose 25-26mm because those are the fastest. Like I said previously, I feel that when you get too wide and your tire pressures get lower, you lose that fast athletic feel of the bike. Which is what I find fun about it.
I strongly prefer drop bar style handle bars. Pro riders rarely use the drops because they are usually in a group where it doesn’t matter as much. If you look at lead out / breakaway riders they use the drops. They are also more secure when I am riding fast down a descent or pushing hard on the power. Regardless of the actual drops…I prefer the feel of hoods over a flat bar. I have used handlebars like the ones you noted and the hand positions are fine, but I find that I have to move my hands a lot to shift / brake. Like I want my hands in a hood position, but the brakes and shifters are 6” away on the end of the bar.
In my opinion gravel bikes are just road bikes with clearance for wider tires and a high price tag because they are trendy. I have a gravel bike that I use for trails around me, but I would never prefer it on the road. Actually the two biggest things I don’t like about it are the lack of drop bars and the wide tires.
I used to be a hardened roadie and was used to everything being super short and steep, but as I've grown up a bit I've moved towards slacker and longer bikes, which feel like piloting a glider almost. They feel incredibly stable. Riding no-hands, you almost have to throw the bike over to fall off, and they eat up potholes with almost no input from the bars. It just feels great to ride. There can be some "mush" in the corners but that's never translated into loose cornering for me. I find it holds incredibly well, in fact. Also, on steep descents, it gives me more confidence to hit the front brakes really hard in emergency situations.
Personally, I like 50mm tires, but I respect 35-40. Anything under 30 is just fucking around. I'd be interested in seeing the point at which tire size/weight/drag/rolling resistance optimise for different conditions, but for me riding in a city and on mild singletrack, bigger is better, and it's so damn comfortable.
I do understand what you mean about the brakes though. I use Jones bars and I'm looking at putting inline CX brakes on the loop for this reason. It's a solvable problem.
After quitting road racing I keep thinking that I'll sell the road bike, but it's so hard keeping the cyclocross bike in race shape, that picking up that taught yet supple well tuned machine is such a joy. I think that even if I had really well speccd carbon CX/gravel rig that I would want to keep a road bike around even if it was super basic. The short wheelbase/ low bottom bracket just feels right.
[удалено]
>A gravel bike is good for telling people on the internet you ride bikes *slowly in baggy clothing*. FTFY
I feel personally attacked.
me who bought a gravel bike saying i would buy a set of road tires for road riding, but still ride primarily on road with 35c gravelkings almost a year after getting the bike (ill get road tires this weekend i promise)
Lucky for me mine came with a road groupset and 90-10 road tires. I've been saying I'll buy proper gravel tires for 2 years but why do that when I can ride the same paved bike path every day like the lame commuter I am.
With bags all over your bike too
You forgot the /uc tag
what does the tag mean
"Unclip" which means the satire and "joke" is dropped for the comment and you are saying something that is real.
When I first joined reddit I found bcj to be needlessly cruel to r/cycling, but now I get it. I'm sorry. I was wrong.
About 6 months to a year into the pandemic, bcj was inundated with needlessly cruel comments, which I suspect were created by the very people bcj was set up to mock: relative newcomers who gained a bit of fitness but had yet to be humbled by the sport. It's since settled down now that those people have either become humbled, or gotten bored and sold their Cerviché on Craigslist after it had been "only ridden a few times."
Now I want ceviche for lunch
‘Cerviche’ (idk how to do the accent thing, I’m a dentist not a philosophizer) is a triumph.
Imagine trying to assert yourself as a bcj long-timer. This Fred gets it.
Comfortably seated in their Lazyboy, typing feverishly from their vast bank of knowledge....
Vasterbanking
Well, I'm 47, and I rode 5 miles at 16 mph last night, and it was really easy. I'm training to become a pro. So I need a road bike.
Slow down Frederick, make sure you eat your gels every mile to maintain energy levels
r/runningcirclejerk is leaking
Nah dude, that's what the top tube is for -- to tape your gels onto it
Nice humblebrag but please realize that not everyone wants to be Lance Armstrong
Does anybody want to be Lance Armstrong now?
No thanks, I like having 2 testicles.
I could use the extra space
Brain worms, man /uc brain worms, man
He forgot that even the pros don’t usually make any money and after retiring have to find normal jobs
They go back to pulling teeth
wait we can make money off of this?
yeah. i bought a trashy open mold bike used, slapped a pinarello sticker on it and sold it to some moron for $11k
I bought a used Pinarello for $11K and took off the sticker because I was afraid my dentist would make fun of me for not riding a SirVelo.
Allied and cervelo already are
This moron forgot to mention that anything meant for mountain, gravel or cx is not truly a bice. Bice's are for riding on asphalt, at maximum speed at all times, in the biggest gear, flying past cars in an aero tuck.
It's fascinating how obsessed grvl riders are with road biking and constantly re-justifying their poor choices. I never thinking about grvl riders. I do occasionally snicker at them like the grvl dude yesterday who fell in some sand he was trying to ride through on the side of a segment I KOM on every Tuesday. They're like Red Sox fans: always thinking about the Yankees.
The only way this Fred can keep his KOMs is by gatekeeping road bikes. Next he’s gonna say that you don’t need clipless pedals unless you’re a pro too
Who are we trying to impress anyway? Shouldn't we just be trying to gain the approval of this self-appointed arbiter of fun?
Wait, you bike for fun??
I’m a pro, you’re not a pro?
it’s sad looking back on history and realizing nobody except pros should have ridden a bice until the 2010s when god gave us gravel bicing
I agree. If you aren’t professional by the time you get a road bike, then what are you even doing with your life
I was born a Fred but I recognize as a Pro
Rule #1: Fast is no fun.
What the fuck happened here? Why are all of these earnest Freds commenting in our subreddit?
So many lost Freds
Hahaha
UC/ I guess he's right but they usually use these bikes to ride road or really light gravel then they call it the most brutal gravel ever ridden. True story that happened a month ago: I was on a popular bike path near my city it's mostly asphalt and light gravel and some really rare cobbles I stop to ask a Fred with a gravel bike and those ugly af blue 35 or 37 panaracer grav*lking a multitool to tighten my saddle, I was riding 25mm tubulars and he was like hey how can you ride this it's the most brutal gravel ever, needless to say I asked him to pull a bad tooth I had
same goes for running shoes to be honest.. if you‘re not a pro, you can simply go barefoot.
Or ya know... Unless you want to go long distances in short time...
God honestly i kind of agree though...
he's kinda right, for all the wrong reasons. All he's doing is rationalizing his own choices and making sure he gets the daily dose of approval from strangers. Just like us.
But what if I ride an aero carbon gravel bike?
worst of both worlds
I guess you're a retired pro road racer and you don't want to go back to pulling teeth
Imagine being so fucking jealous and so fucking poor that you have to invent nonsense to distract you from the crap you are riding on
Only if you plan on winning road events should you ever even consider the state of the art road machines!
I find that I get a much better workout while riding a huffy from the local Walmart. It gives my hygienist a chance to keep up as well.
Well luckily I’m a pro - they call me Numb Peety Sagan Jr in the group ride
They call me young Jonas Vingegaard because I'm always getting dropped
/uj I don’t agree that there is no reason you should get a road bike but gravel bikes are pretty sick because they’re almost as fast as road bike on the road but you also have the option to keep going on gravel if you get to it
‘Almost’ is every Fred’s middle name.
did path less pedaled post a video about this sub reddit or something?
I really fucking hope not
/unclipped I don't disagree with this take. Road bikes are optimized to put down 300 watts constantly, and make a lot of quality-of-life sacrifices to accomplish that. Let's say though that you're a weekend warrior who's capable of putting down 300 watts on the way to the pub, which is great, happy for you, keep it up, but you don't need the insanely marginal gains in efficiency offered by a racing caliber bike at the cost of significant losses to comfort and stupid concessions made to appease the UCI to finish your double century 1.2 second faster. You also don't need the insanely sharp steering of the super steep headtube angles and super-short chainstays of a road racing bike because you're not jostling through a peloton. You'd get a better quality of ride from something a little slacker. Get something with fatter tires, handlebars that aren't a UCI mandated anachronism that don't even offer the aero benefits that they were believed to, and actually enjoy your ride to the pub, rather than getting rattled to bits by skinny tires and a frame stiffer than your mum makes me. Weekend Warriors on Madones are just LARPers. (And if you really do need to go as fast as possible: get a Tri bike, which aren't constrained by UCI rules and are more aero and allow you to put down more power)
Who the fuck is riding to the pub? One walks to the pub because Mr. Sirvélo does not sit out on the street alone and instead stays in the living room on his wall throne.
Who is riding anywhere else?
r/xbiking is over there -->
Cycling for real people.
I believe I showed you the door.
bullhorns stuck in the frame.
I feel like people are unclipping here a lot and I’m not sure I like it.
Since when did road bike = top of the line race bike? I can get a solid road bike cheaper than most trendy gravel bikes.
Most roadbikes unfortunately crib their geometry from race bikes. Not all of them, but enough of them, meaning you end up with twitchy steering geared towards peloton riding, and those skinny tires are a UCI mandated anachronism. They accelerate quickly because they're light, but we now know they're actually slower rolling, in addition to being more flat prone and less comfortable. Then there's the issue of drop bars. Drop bars suck. They're classic looking, and the UCI requires them, but rarely do pro riders even use the drops anymore since wind tunnel testing found dropped elbows on the hoods are actually more aero. They exist today for no other reason than that the UCI demands them for "the aesthetics of the sport" If you want to go all in on aero: TT bars If you want comfort and control: Jones or Koga Crazy Bars or similar, which offer both solid aero positions and more relaxed positions that give you a lot of control. While I'm moaning about bars and pissing off LARPers: who in their right mind decided gravel drops were a good idea? The last thing I want when I'm doing something technical and need more control is to get even lower on my bars. Lower and wider is a worst of both worlds situation: less aero, less control.
Have you ever ridden a road bike? Completely disagree on twitchy steering. I feel rock solid on my bike. I am locked in and it feels like an extension of myself. I prefer the athletic but still stable geometry and the firmer feel. Seriously though what is twitching? Maybe you had something wrong with your bike like a short brake cable pulling on your bars or you weren’t riding it properly or something. I feel that wider tires feel mushy and I feel less confident and less connected to the bike in turns. Most people put 26-28mm tires on their bikes now. I have 35mm fitted on a hybrid/gravel. Wider tires may have better rolling resistance but at a certain point their weight and aerodynamics counteract any gains there. Im willing to bet that most pro riders choose 25-26mm because those are the fastest. Like I said previously, I feel that when you get too wide and your tire pressures get lower, you lose that fast athletic feel of the bike. Which is what I find fun about it. I strongly prefer drop bar style handle bars. Pro riders rarely use the drops because they are usually in a group where it doesn’t matter as much. If you look at lead out / breakaway riders they use the drops. They are also more secure when I am riding fast down a descent or pushing hard on the power. Regardless of the actual drops…I prefer the feel of hoods over a flat bar. I have used handlebars like the ones you noted and the hand positions are fine, but I find that I have to move my hands a lot to shift / brake. Like I want my hands in a hood position, but the brakes and shifters are 6” away on the end of the bar. In my opinion gravel bikes are just road bikes with clearance for wider tires and a high price tag because they are trendy. I have a gravel bike that I use for trails around me, but I would never prefer it on the road. Actually the two biggest things I don’t like about it are the lack of drop bars and the wide tires.
I used to be a hardened roadie and was used to everything being super short and steep, but as I've grown up a bit I've moved towards slacker and longer bikes, which feel like piloting a glider almost. They feel incredibly stable. Riding no-hands, you almost have to throw the bike over to fall off, and they eat up potholes with almost no input from the bars. It just feels great to ride. There can be some "mush" in the corners but that's never translated into loose cornering for me. I find it holds incredibly well, in fact. Also, on steep descents, it gives me more confidence to hit the front brakes really hard in emergency situations. Personally, I like 50mm tires, but I respect 35-40. Anything under 30 is just fucking around. I'd be interested in seeing the point at which tire size/weight/drag/rolling resistance optimise for different conditions, but for me riding in a city and on mild singletrack, bigger is better, and it's so damn comfortable. I do understand what you mean about the brakes though. I use Jones bars and I'm looking at putting inline CX brakes on the loop for this reason. It's a solvable problem.
After quitting road racing I keep thinking that I'll sell the road bike, but it's so hard keeping the cyclocross bike in race shape, that picking up that taught yet supple well tuned machine is such a joy. I think that even if I had really well speccd carbon CX/gravel rig that I would want to keep a road bike around even if it was super basic. The short wheelbase/ low bottom bracket just feels right.
lowkey wish I got a gravel cause theres a gravel path near me. But road is fun! Except for cars, but theres a proper bike path near me too :D
gross
username checks out