Originally Posted by
HTupolev
I think the main reason that most of us don't crash much on our gravel bikes is that's we didn't get them to ride "trails", we got them to ride roads.
Yeah I didn't think of that til the first person responded. I live in an area with lots of trails and lots of paved roads and also lots of fire roads, but not many unpaved normal roads. I got the bike to do as much trail s*** as possible but still have fun around town and on the way to the trails.
Originally Posted by
HTupolev
The gravel I ride is anything but flat (I've exceeded 200ft/mile in gravel rides before), and is often a long ways from "nice" (the aggregate is frequently chunky and poorly-maintained), but it's not technical.
I just meant smoothish, like the kind where you can just straight ride over whatever's in the path without much focus. 200 ft per mile is pretty brutal for a round trip.
Originally Posted by
HTupolev
How much a rider crashes on any bike is largely not a function of the bike itself, but of how far the rider chooses to push their skills past what they're comfortable doing on that bike. If you're taking a gravel bike on technical trails, and you're sending it without being an especially spectacular bicycle handler, it's not surprising that you'd be experiencing some crashes. Especially if the gravel bike is closer to being a fat-tired road bike than a drop-bar MTB, which yours is.
Yeah I guess I was just wondering if anyone would be like "yeah, that's how it is at first, but it gets better" or something.