Road bike or Cyclocross (@Maryland)?
04-30-17, 08:43 PM
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Road bike or Cyclocross (@Maryland)?
I'm riding a mt bike mostly for exercising/fun at weekends and my favorite trail is Rock Creek Trail in Maryland. My bike is heavy and I thought I wanted a road bike. However, as I started doing some research, I wonder if I really need a cyclocross which may be more adaptive to different types of roads? Will a road bike be easily damaged on roads not well paved?
06-24-17, 01:17 PM
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A Hybrid would be fine. To much gravel and you aren't going anywhere on a road bike.
Also Balto County. Not far from the NCR.
06-29-17, 07:22 PM
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I would consider one of the "gravel" bikes. I'm honestly not sure exactly how they differ from a cyclocross bike (geometry maybe?) but they are pretty sweet. I went from a road bike (Giant OCR carbon) to a gravel bike about 2 years ago (Jamis Renegade) and I won't go back. In fact I'm gonna try selling my Giant (anyone want?). My average speeds are pretty much the same on both, but my Jamis can handle a far wider range of conditions. It has been great from smooth roads to light mountain biking so far.
The nail in the coffin was last year I had a shifter issue, so while the Jamis was in the shop I went back to the giant. On my first ride out I had to move over for traffic, whacked a small pothole and blew both of my skinny tires. It wasn't even as bad as some of the stuff I've run over in the Jamis.
Now I'm not a racer or even a club rider so for pure group speed road riding I don't know how it would fare. Although I think it would be fine. It is within 5 pounds of my road bike and I recently saw a video showing that slighting larger tires actually offer lower rolling resistance so...
The nail in the coffin was last year I had a shifter issue, so while the Jamis was in the shop I went back to the giant. On my first ride out I had to move over for traffic, whacked a small pothole and blew both of my skinny tires. It wasn't even as bad as some of the stuff I've run over in the Jamis.
Now I'm not a racer or even a club rider so for pure group speed road riding I don't know how it would fare. Although I think it would be fine. It is within 5 pounds of my road bike and I recently saw a video showing that slighting larger tires actually offer lower rolling resistance so...
