Lazyass

The first paragraph made feel bad for a second, since I now have a gravel bike. But I ride it on the road like any other racing bike I have. I only bought it so I could run bigger tires on my chipseal from hell roads, it's more practical.

The Death of Road Riding

https://www.outsideonline.com/2235071/death-road-riding

rm -rf

It's tl;dr.

By the Bike Snob NYC guy, but not in his blog style...

A few years ago, I wanted the "one bike to do everything", including fast group rides, long hill climbs, all-day rides, gravel roads, and even credit card touring.

But every bike had compromises. So I have two bikes:

A carbon road bike, for group rides and longer rides with resupply stops along the way. Fun and fast to ride. I ride this the most often.

A gravel style bike, with a wide range triple crank, fenders, and a rear rack. It takes up to 40mm tires or road tires. It's great for unsupported long rides, bringing water, food, and extra clothing layers. Way better on wet roads or if there's a chance of rain. Good on gravel roads with the right tires. Handles lightweight touring too.

Bigger tires on a road bike
Lots of road bikes now have room for 30mm tires. 10 or 12 years ago, even 25mm tires were a tight fit. My 30mm road tires on my gravel bike are very nice on bumpy, chip-seal, or potholed roads.

I have 26mm tires on my fast road bike. These are reasonably smooth and still fast.

ThermionicScott 

BSNYC can be verbose when he has the room to do it, but I enjoyed the read.

TimothyH

Putting phrases like "The Death of" in the title is sure to foment controversy and drive readership - a classic attempt to drive a wedge, to fool the reader into a false premise which requires taking one side or the other.

It's op-ed, nothing more, and poorly written at that. "Really not too much difference" is horrible English.


-Tim-

u235

I ride my gravel with 40 tires everywhere. I have an older OCR3 with 23c and I never ride it.

gl98115

I have a 20 yr old rigid mountain bike that I use for commuting on the road. Haven't died yet.

Troy Winter

Riding on gravel roads is road riding.

Cyclist0108

It is what got me back into road riding.

McBTC

from the article:

I think I grew up in the sport before it was waxing but I did see MTB's wax and had my share of offroad thrills and spills but mostly look forward now -- hopefully for many more years -- to enjoying the waning sport of road biking on 25s.

Hiro11

Speaking personally, I've entirely given up riding on the road alone. I'll only do group road rides. This is because I'm often terrified on the road which is strange coming from someone who's riding tens of thousands of road miles since the mid eighties. At least once per ride a driver either actively or passively tries to kill me: right hooks, 60mph close passes etc. Other drivers will shadow me for mile after mile, too timid to pass, irritating everyone behind them and making it my fault. Or they'll get into a "you go... no you go" waving contest at stop lights that wastes everyone's time. Or they'll floor it to get by me fifty feet from a red light. Etc. Now in the mid-forties with a family dependent on me I simply don't have time for this crap.

As the author points out, these kinds of stresses seriously decrease the pleasure of riding on the road. Riding gravel MUPs or mountain biking starts to look pretty attractive to me. As I get older, the appeal of these alternatives only gets stronger.

Cyclist0108

I think it is blogger vernacular -- sort of poetic license without iambic pentameter.

Tell me a phrase like that isn't worthy of the Nobel Prize in literature. Or at least chemistry.

CliffordK

I will say that riding habits change and evolve.

I certainly wouldn't say that roadies are disappearing. The road riders are very dominant on some bike forums such as this one (less on on MTBR.COM). Century rides and similar long distance rides are very popular. There are, of course, large groups of older riders doing the century riders, but perhaps they just never see the young riders leaving them in the dust!!!

I don't believe one has to be covered in spandex to be classified as a roadie.

Actually, I think I'm seeing a resurrection of interest in road riding now that better tires and better equipment is available. As far as wide tires, or even cross... that may well compliment road riding. I've done 100+ miles of riding with 10 or 20 miles of gravel. In those cases, it just makes the road riding easier... and it was riding on roads, just with rough, soft surfaces.

RJM

That is signature worthy.

Kapusta

"Roadie" culture is not dying, but it IS losing it's place of sole dominance in the non-mtb world.

And thank goodness for that.

As a result we have much better quality equipment options for actually riding on the road than we did 15 years ago, as it became OK to produce bikes with useful features that "real roadies" dispised: wide tires, more upright cockpits, rack/fender mounts, more stable geometries.

You also don't need to dress like a ballerina to be a "real" rider anymore. Roadies may disagree, but fewer people are listening.

I think it was the influence of people approaching road riding from commuter/utility and mountain biking backgrounds that is helping a lot in this regard.

I've got nothing against people who want to approach road riding as a racing-centered activity with strict norms and traditions. It just always bothered me that they were always defered to as the "serious" cyclists.

IMO, one of the best things to happen for mountain biking was decline of XC racing as the main driver of the sport. I hope the same for road riding culture.

TimothyH

The author Eben Weiss seems to think so because he is fond of using it. He also of fond of using "Got" instead of "have" and commas where they are not needed.

I really don't understand this idea riding is somehow more pure if you wear wool, are covered in mud and don't use a GPS.

bobwysiwyg

He seems to prefer colloquial speech/writing. Some like it some don't.

Cyclist0108

That is where I found it.



Should that not read as follows?

TimothyH

Probably, but then I'm not employed writing op-ed for a major publication.

The editorial isn't even that interesting. It starts with a false premise and goes downhill from there.

There are still a few online e-zines with high literary standards. National Geographic comes to mind.


-Tim-

zimdba

How about: you ride what you want, where you want, whenever you want. I'll do the same. If our paths happen to cross, great!

Personally, I'm a "horses for courses" kind of guy. Right now, commuting isn't an option, so I have an MTB, a gravel grinder. and a roadie. I can't see getting rid of any of them for any reason.

Cyclist0108

It's Outside magazine. Right up there with Bicycling!, except even the latter didn't publish an FBI smear campaign hit piece on Peter Matthiessen.

JonathanGennick 

Best post I've read in a month. I'm super grateful for the proliferation of gravel-friendly options these days. I ride roads more than ever before -- sometimes gravel, and sometimes a mix of gravel and pavement.

zaxmalloy

Interesting article, but I think he has it wrong. That is the proliferation of biking generally (e-bike, fat bike, cyclecross) etc. has expanded the universe of biking options. Road biking may or may not be more or less popular than ever - it's just a smaller slice of an ever growing pie. Just MHO.

Seattle Forrest

This. Dirt roads are roads. Riding (especially a drop bar bike) on the road is road riding.

TimothyH

I think we have reached both clarity and agreement here.

gilpi

At 62 years old and having done much street/road riding milage, this worries me... "According to the NHTSA, it kills over 3,000 people a year. Sure, it was never uncommon to see a driver scarfing a bag of McDonald's while driving with their knees, but now that same driver is also engrossed in a Twitter flame war and playing Pokemon Go at the same time"
There are many roads I used to ride on in the 80's and 90's that I wouldn't even think about riding on today, perhaps being older made me a little wiser? Lately I spend more time on gravel and dirt trails just to get away from traffic even though I love riding on the road.