Originally Posted by
Dirt Farmer
Wait, there's gravel in Manhattan??
You learn something new every day!
The gravel IN Manhattan (the Bridle Path in Central Park) is reserved for runners and horses, but there's gravel CLOSE to Manhattan. The Old Croton Aqueduct Trail is wonderful and starts in the North Bronx. And it's easy to get to miles and miles of gravel (dirt) roads if you take MetroNorth to places like Cold Spring, Katona, etc. I also do rides that are mostly paved but with significant gravel sections – say up by Nyack.
Originally Posted by
billyymc
So back to the original post. Like most questions here that get asked in BF, the best answer is "it depends."
Whether a gravel bike will perform well as a road bike for you depends on what you want out of a road bike. From what the OP said (assuming he's still here after six pages of typical BF arguing), a gravel bike with a second wheelset seems like a very good option for him. The caveat being I don't know what his group rides are like. If he's struggling to keep up on group rides with an "actual" road bike, perhaps swapping to a gravel bike with road-oriented tires would put him off the pace. Perhaps. And perhaps not.
As I mentioned above, I bought a Fuji Jari 1.3 almost a year ago now. And this spring I got a 650B wheelset for it. I put 700C x 28s on when it's a paved route or mostly paved with some "polite" gravel (e.g. hard pack cinders), and I put 650B x 47s on when it's rougher or I just want a plusher ride that day and speed isn't an issue. On group rides people notice that it's a gravel bike when I have the 47s on. But it passes for a road bike when I have the 28s on. The only comments I get are along the lines of "Did you buy another bike? I thought your bike was a gravel bike…"
Originally Posted by
pinsonp2
Depending on how fast you ride the road, the front chainrings on these bikes (48/32 or 46/30) as opposed to the standard compact (50/34) on a road may not be satisfactory. You may 'spin out' from time to time.
The lower gearing of my bike suits me. Honestly spinning out hasn't been a problem. I get close to it sometimes, but I'm not really a speed freak and I'm usually thinking about how to slow down in those moments.