Originally Posted by
Noonievut
I've ridden 'gravel' for 6-8 years now, along with road cycling. I've had 4 gravel bikes and the current iteration is probably most comfortable (carbon, good fit, 42mm tubeless), but my body is throwing in the towel. The gravel roads I ride are not necessarily chunky, they're hard, have old gravel embedded and loose gravel on top, with a fair amount of bumps and pot holes. Even with PSI down to 30 and zero tension from me, I get worn down too fast to make it worthwhile. I can ride 80-100k on paved roads with my road bike or this gravel bike and feel awesome afterwards, but once I take the gravel bike on gravel roads, my body gets too sore too quick (can make it 50-60k before I'm looking for pavement). I have no idea how people do 200 mile races but to each their own.
I've felt this way about riding around within the city limits this summer. The cracking, loose pavement is about to make me go looking for a gravel bike to ride city streets!
And then I ride a bit longer and get out to the county, and the roads get better. What's wrong with this picture? Oh, yeah, the city put its road budget into paving parking lots and building new parking decks for some of the mayor's investments.
Maybe it's just me realizing this after all these years, but I feel like the gravel movement has led some of us to go find gravel roads, so we can justify the bike purchase. I don't have many gravel roads around, and those that are close by are as I say, not fun for me. I do have paved roads that after a 5 minute drive out of a small town, go through country roads and small towns...and leaving early in the morning as I usually do, means little traffic.
The other reason I might buy a gravel bike is that when we retire in a few years, we might move up to the mountains where there are gravel roads. I haven't persuaded myself the probability of that justifies the purchase. Yet.