Originally Posted by
pdlamb
Trying to look at this from a more generic viewpoint. Would it be fair to say your "gravel bike" would be one that had the capability to handle wider tires (whatever that's defined as), and you'd prefer to have two wheelsets, one for narrower tires and one for wider? Would I be correct to guess you'd want disc brakes to make the changeover easier?
That is me.
I spend decades on a mountain bike, because road bikes are totally inappropriate to the roads around here (crappy broken up cement, asphalt and chip seal). At the beginning of this century, they were trying to tell us road bikes had to be ultra stiff, small tired, tight clearance Tour-de-France machines. Those bikes were crap on real roads, and I never bought one. an '90's mountain bike was faster.
finally, gravel bikes were re-invented (just like we had in the '70's) I can now ride them on my local roads, commute on them, and out sprint road bikes on our local club rides (on crap asphalt).
Currently running a CX bike on 37-38mm Conti GP5000 and Schwalbe Pro-one tires. ~10 watts rolling resistance - its as fast as my track bike, but usable on the broken asphalt we have around here. About 10% faster than the roadies on 25mm tires at 120psi. Its kind of a cheater tire on asphalt, but quite fun on class 1-2 gravel. Its giggles and laughs sprinting past road bikes on rough asphalt because they are being pummeled to death on our roads.
for rougher gravel I bump up to 40-50mm tires that can handle 2" thick gravel they lay down around here when re-grading a road.