Endurance bike for CX racing
 

I'm looking to get an endurance road bike that I hope to use for CX racing, but for winter (rainy) training, and commuting as well. What I'm looking at is a Felt VR5, which has disc brakes, thru-axles, and what look to be reasonably beefy wheels. How bad will it be to race cross on this bike? Really I'm looking to go this route instead of a CX bike is for the fender eyelets, which I'm assuming I could also use to mount a rack for commuting.

One big question I haven't answered yet is how big of tires can it take, (chainstay length is 417mm, compared with 430mm on thier cross bikes and 407 on the road).

Thoughts on this approach?

Edit: I should mention that I plan to race 4-6 CX races a year, mostly weeknight series.
Thanks.

As far as I can tell, the VR5 doesn't have rack mounts...

I think a cyclocross bike that you also use for commuting/road riding etc is a better idea. At least, I hope it is, because I have a CX bike on order for just that lol.

I don’t know the geometry on this, but in general a CX bike can cut a really tight corner and accelerate hard out of a corner. I find myself carrying more momentum through turns on a CX bike. The triangle is a little small for shouldering. Other than that you’ll probably be fine.

It has 42mm of clearance in the rear, so you should easily be able to ride 35mm tires – maybe 38mm if its not muddy (ISO standards require 6mm, but you can do whatever you feel comfortable with). Front forks typically have much more clearance so you could go bigger there. I do that a lot on gravel just to be able to run lower pressure and have a little more cush up front.

What pray-tell? Your custom build?

Got a Focus Mares 105. Not custom build, just a professional bike fit. Made a HUGE difference...he applied it to my old bike.

A buddy of mine used one of these for a season and the biggest issue was that the stock front derailleur would rub on a 35mm CX tire (short chainstays), especially under load. You can see on their website how close it sits to the stock 28's. Going 1X or using the newer generation of Shimano FD's should mitigate this. Felt lists the fork length as 380 which should be ok as long as it doesn't get too muddy.

Following up on my question from this summer... I ended up buying a Felt Endurance bike, mounting 33mm Cx tires on it (I think I could go up to 35mm easily, and maybe even 38's) and did 7 races this fall. A few had some muddy sections, but none of them were really muddy. The bike felt great - I don't think I had a worse time in tight corners or up steep, slick hills than others, but maybe I don't know what I'm missing. Thanks for the advice.

if a bike has eyelets aren't they usually fine for both/either rack or fenders? ...i haven't broken an eyelet thru any kind of use / abuse. decades. i often use long bolt and put both rack and fenders same eyelet, no prob.

hard to imagine an enduro bike being a problem for CX. it's good if somewhat compact rather than long and stretched out. that's what you'd notice. also as long as it has brifters you're good. disks are good, too.

the only other thing you'd find really sweet wd be tubies but that's another can of (heavenly) worms. i don't think i'd even be doing CX if it weren't for my lovely tubies.

Glad you got some races in! Congrats!

Oh yea for sure. If you can get 35mm tires into an endurance bike...you're good to go. Rethink it when you get to cat 1 maybe lol :thumb:

Right, when I get to cat 1... I may have one or two more races that I get to this year, and already my plan for an upgrade for next year is to go to tubeless tires, and maybe a 35mm (up from 33). My rims are tubeless ready, so it isn't a costly upgrade.