Gravel bikes - why?

 Why Ride a Gravel Bike?

I mean why ride a gravel bike on the ROAD? While they make perfect sense for gravel roads you'll read varying opinions on whether they're any good for riding on asphalt roads. Here's Zio Lorenzo's take:

Perhaps the first thing you should consider is the quality of your local roads. "Champagne asphalt" as in smooth pavement with few potholes or cracks? Not a lot of junk on the edges where the cars rarely drive? A classic road bike with 28/30 mm tires might be just fine on those, but reading THIS might change your mind.

If you believe that (and I do) you might want to experiment as I did awhile back with "SuperMonsterGravel" shown above. I wanted something to play with on the unpaved rail trail that runs along the sea near our house so I made my own gravel bike out of an ancient MTB. The handlebar/stem position isn't perfect due to the MTB's looong top tube but I recently put this bike back "on the trail" rather than get my new e-gravel bike dirty every time Heather wants to take her e-gravel bike out on the dusty trail. It's still fun to ride.

Fooling around with this bike further convinced me the "wider isn't slower" argument had merits after being passed on "SMG" by a guy on a high-zoot, full-carbon roadracing bike with I'd guess 25/28 mm tires. I cranked it up a bit to see if I could keep the gap from opening up despite riding this ancient MTB with 50+mm tires at 40 psi. The results backed up the claims about wider tires, so a "real" gravel bike was next.

Now if roadRACING is your thing vs JRA, you can stop here. Nobody's gonna claim you're gonna have an advantage in any roadrace except maybe Strade Bianche and even there the pros ride their regular roadracing bicycles with maybe some 32 mm tires squeezed-in. They also have a follow-car with spare wheels and bikes just behind them at all times.

But for JRA, Zio Lorenzo's convinced a gravel bike is better. But perhaps only if you make it fit and feel like that roadracing bike. You can read elsewhere on this blog about all the things he changed on his but #1 was the TIRES! Even if your high-end gravel bike comes with top-quality, high TPI tires they're gonna have knobs on 'em...something totally useless on pavement and honestly not much good anywhere else unless you're on a soft enough surface for rubber knobs to dig-in and increase grip. Swap the knobbies out for some high-TPI fat slicks and feel the difference!

Next you might think about gearing. Since most gravel bikes are 1X lots of folks seem to think the gear range isn't sufficient. Again, if you are RACING on the roads it's probably not, but 40 X 11 will get me going 60+ kph though these days I can't hold that speed for long, so why do I need any more gear? Going faster downhill means I tuck-in rather than pedal anyway. Same on the bottom end, 40 X 42 isn't far-off from the old triple 30 X 32 I used to use to climb the Passo Stelvio or Mortirolo and not having to fool around with shifting in the front is nice.

Finally there's the added weight. 10 kg seems to be about average, so you're dragging around more than someone on a 6.8 kg World Tour level machine but how many are riding those these days? Classic steel road bikes from back-in-the-day weighed around 10 kg and they didn't seem to slow the likes of Merckx or Gimondi down much, so for JRA Zio's betting you won't even notice until/unless you put it on a scale.

On less-than-perfect roads 38 mm slicks with 40 psi in them let you look where you're going rather than always riding with one eye looking down to avoid cracks, potholes, etc. The usually stiffer gravel bike frame's possible harshness on the road is mitigated nicely by these same tires. All this assumes you opt for a gravel bike more on the "racy" side rather than a MTB with drop bars which seem to be popping up now that gravel is getting segmented into fast vs gnarly terrain. 

Zio's take is MTB's are still available for a reason but a more "racy" gravel-bike is the best toy for JRAing on anything short of perfect asphalt...and where does one find THAT these days?