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Long Distance Touring on Gravel Bike vs. Endurance Bike?

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Long Distance Touring on Gravel Bike vs. Endurance Bike?

Old 10-15-21, 10:40 AM
  #51  
bheinemann
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Thank you guys for all of your help. I've got the Diverge Comp Carbon bike going and have been doing a bunch of outdoor PNW riding on both pavement and gravel trails so far and it is awesome.
Really light bike - about 20 pounds. I'm 175 lbs. On my Canada to Mexico trip next summer I plan to go as light as possible since I'm going to "credit card" it and stay in no-tell motels along the way.

Wondering if anyone has any opinion on any mods you would make that would help with the hilly climbing I'm going to run into, especially in Northern CA? In particular, the bike came stock with 38mm tires (Pathfinder Pro) and DT Swiss G540 rims on front and back.

Run smaller tires? Change to different rims? Just leave it as is and get light bags? (many of you have mentioned the bags you have which is awesome)

I want to train with the as close to what I will have this summer from now until then...

Appreciate you all.
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Old 10-15-21, 03:55 PM
  #52  
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Standard 700c wheels and tubular tires so 45 front and a 26 in the rear for my lowest gear. When going through the high sierras I would change out the 26 tooth cog for a 28 tooth one to have a lower "granny" gear. In many areas I gained time by being able to pedal on downgrades and much of the time I have not found myself on level terrain as I prefer the coast and mountain areas. When I started touring with lady friends I switched to 52/44 chainrings to provide lower gearing as I put all our gear on my bike. Going to Yosemite I dished the rear cog and ended the trip with a 24 tooth one for my lowest gear and that was not fun at all. But I learned to keep the total load under 20 lbs and had no issues doing 70 miles each day in the mountains and 100+ miles along the coast or in the valleys.

Along the California coast the only significant grade is at the end of Anderson Valley before you get to the coast. Good idea to do it as early in the day as you can. Take spare tubes and spare spokes and spare brake and gear cables and you should be able to make it just fine. A good Pulltap corkscrew for wine bottles also comes in very handy. At least with the pandemic there are a lot more places with outdoor eating so one can keep an eye on the bike the entire time.
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Old 10-16-21, 05:53 AM
  #53  
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Originally Posted by zandoval
... I have never done an 1800 mile ride and most likely never will, but I am sure I'll give sleeping gear comfort a high priority if I do.
My longer tours are about half that distance, but I am content with a tent, air mattress, good sleeping bag, sleeping bag liner, and a waterproof compression sack to store the sleeping bag in. Care is needed to find a spot that won't be a puddle in rain when you pick the tent site.
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Old 10-16-21, 07:55 AM
  #54  
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Originally Posted by zandoval
I'm not a Touring person but I talk to many passing through Bastrop Tx at the State Park. I was amused and impressed with a rider doing an 1800 mile ride who had a small trailer on his steel Trek. The trailer contained a huge padded sleeping bag that took up the whole trailer. When he saw me give it the eye he smiled and said, "...after the first three nights I gave up on my Snug Pack. I curl up in that big thing and all is well." Some things gather more importance as you go along. I have never done an 1800 mile ride and most likely never will, but I am sure I'll give sleeping gear comfort a high priority if I do.
I really don't find tour length to be a factor in that. My first tour was over 4300 miles and my tours are all generally at least 900-1000 miles, but I carry the same gear regardless of tour length. If I were to go for the weekend I'd carry pretty much the same stuff. Heck I am so used to the gear that I tend to take the same pad and bag if I car camp even though I own basecamp style stuff.

Different strokes and all that but that doesn't track with my experience of what has worked for me. There are two kinds of comfort that really matter on tour, sleeping comfort and riding comfort. So yeah sleeping comfort is big, but...

For me comfort while sleeping doesn't require sprawling space or a huge sleeping bag. Sleeping comfort requires a nice comfy sleeping pad and a good sleeping bag, but that doesn't mean either need to be big. My 17 ounce down bag (Mountain Hardwear Phantom 45) and 12 ounce sleeping pad (Neoair xLite) fill the bill nicely and the whole setup packs tiny. I add a 3 ounce exped inflatable pillow that I find as comfortable as my pillow at home and takes up no noticeable space when rolled up with the sleeping pad. If find the setup to be a great setup and I sleep like a baby on tour or when backpacking, typically better than I do at home.

The light compact setup allows for the other kind of comfort, comfort on the bike. One of the biggest factors there, in my opinion, is a light load. The comfort of riding with a relatively unladen bike is pretty hard to beat. I have toured with 60 pounds of stuff, I have toured with 9 pounds of stuff, and I have toured with everything in between. In all cases I was self supported camping and cooking. Without a doubt the heaviest was the least comfortable. The very lightest setup may have begun to give up a little in some ways so I went to a bit bigger tarp and splurgered here and there going back up to 12# or so of carefully chosen gear. The biggest difference was that the smallest tarps needed to be pitched really low to provide any real shelter in bad weather. A bigger tarp can be pitched higher allowing sitting up and having more sheltered space when the weather is bad. I refuse to splurge on crazy expensive stuff like cuben fiber and what not so for most trips that is a good target weight for me.

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Old 10-16-21, 08:11 AM
  #55  
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Originally Posted by Calsun
Standard 700c wheels and tubular tires ....
Are you serious, tubular tires for touring?
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Old 10-16-21, 11:27 AM
  #56  
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Originally Posted by Calsun
Standard 700c wheels and tubular tires so 45 front and a 26 in the rear for my lowest gear. When going through the high sierras I would change out the 26 tooth cog for a 28 tooth one to have a lower "granny" gear. In many areas I gained time by being able to pedal on downgrades and much of the time I have not found myself on level terrain as I prefer the coast and mountain areas. When I started touring with lady friends I switched to 52/44 chainrings to provide lower gearing as I put all our gear on my bike. Going to Yosemite I dished the rear cog and ended the trip with a 24 tooth one for my lowest gear and that was not fun at all. But I learned to keep the total load under 20 lbs and had no issues doing 70 miles each day in the mountains and 100+ miles along the coast or in the valleys.

Along the California coast the only significant grade is at the end of Anderson Valley before you get to the coast. Good idea to do it as early in the day as you can. Take spare tubes and spare spokes and spare brake and gear cables and you should be able to make it just fine. A good Pulltap corkscrew for wine bottles also comes in very handy. At least with the pandemic there are a lot more places with outdoor eating so one can keep an eye on the bike the entire time.
gearing and attitude from a 1970s Paris-Roubaix, right out of an Eddy Merckx quote

I loved how when with the ladies, you made the "drastic" change from a 45 to a 44t chain ring.
Times change, and more appropriate gearing is faster overall and easier on the legs, which makes you faster, even for the modern hardmen. (Which it's probably fair to say that 99%of us are not, especially not me)
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Old 10-20-21, 11:46 AM
  #57  
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Tubular tires was the best choice in tires in 1968 when I did my first trip from Los Angeles to Montery and it was still the best choice in 1970 wnhen I made my first trip from Arcata CA to Pasadena. Rims and clincher tires on 10-speed bikes did not come on the market until much later. Fixing a flat took much longer so I carried two spare tires and with a tubular tire the tube is contained inside and it can be patched in the same manner as any inner tube. Even when the first clincher tires and rims became available few rider switched over to them as they were much heavier and they took longer to change with a flat. A tubular tire can be changed out in less than a minute.

People go in for gross overkill so much of the time. The Vietnamese defeated the entire US military by keeping their supplies going down rugged jungle trails on bicycles that would carry hundreds of pounds. No one was around to tell them it could not be done so they just did it.

I rode with a fellow that weighed over 220 lbs and my other riding companions weighed less than 150 lbs and the hefty guy had all the flat tires and all the broken spokes from our rides. Even modern bikes have a load rating for the bikes and the more emphasis is placed on how light the bike is the more fragile it will be on the open road. Any drop bar bike with 10 speeds and rims that support 25mm or wider tires is going to be adequate to go across the continent if the rider is not "hefty" and does not take a large load of stuff on the bike. Fifty-five years ago when I started doing long distance trips one had to be 100% self sufficient. Today with cell phones and Uber this is no longer the situation and there are 10 times as many bike shops that can service a road bike than in the days of 3-speed Schwinn bikes sold in hardware stores.

I went all along the California coast with zero issues and wiith 46/26 gears on the bike. For the high sierras I would remove the 26 and put on a 28 tooth cog. It comes down to the weight and fitness of the rider and their ability to pack properly. My first trip down the length of California was with a bike carrying a 25 lb load but my second trip was with a 15 lb load and that was with a ground cloth and Svea stove and fuel bottle and tools and cooking items.

While it is heartening to see so many people on the road with their panniers the majority are vastly overloaded. When I started touring the only people I saw out on the open road were hobos who did not even have panniers but would have their bundles wrapped in newspapers and tied with twine onto the bike rack. After my friend and I put together the first bike map for cyclists going down the length of California and it was printed by the then CA Division of Highways and circulated the number of normal bicyclists making the trip increase rapidly within a single year. The impediment was not the available "touring" bicycles but a road map for bicyclists.

Where many people err is in attacking a hill and then hitting a wall before they get to the top. I quickly learned that it was better to roll into a hill and be in a gear where I was 100% certain I could make it to the top. If that meant going up a lot slower it was better than crapping out before I made it to the top. Walking takes a lot more energy and I started out with bike shoes with the metal cleats nailed to the soles and walking on flat ground was difficult enough.
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Old 10-20-21, 01:01 PM
  #58  
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Post deleted to avoid misunderstanding. I was not suggesting that OP should use tubulars on a future trip. Was just telling the story of when I successfully did so 53 years ago when sew-ups were in style.

Last edited by BobG; 10-21-21 at 11:48 AM.
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Old 10-20-21, 01:53 PM
  #59  
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Hats off to you guys who began touring when I was barely in school. I get that the technology waa what it was, but even with a light load, a 45/26 is still hardman gearing , and for your average person, it's pretty darn high gearing,even with very little load.

In the end it's not a passing contest, although especially from roadies there traditionally has been a critical view of lower gearing, mixed in liberally with the attitude that you are not being tough enough if you use lower gearing.

The idea is to enjoy oneself and take care of the legs, so you can still happily use them into your 60s and 70s, as you old geezers are ;-)
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Old 10-20-21, 02:25 PM
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Originally Posted by Calsun
... and with a tubular tire the tube is contained inside and it can be patched in the same manner as any inner tube. Even when the first clincher tires and rims became available few rider switched over to them as they were much heavier and they took longer to change with a flat. A tubular tire can be changed out in less than a minute....
The only times in the past three or four decades that I have touched my tubular tire wheels is when I was cleaning the basement. I keep asking myself why I keep those dust magnets instead of chucking them.

I am not sure how you change out a flat that fast, I never had much luck figuring out where the puncture in the tube was, so I was cutting a lot more thread than I needed to, and then having to hand sew up the tires after patched. It probably took me between a half hour to an hour to fix a puncture in a tire.

And there was no way I could put a different tire on that fast, as it took a long time to apply a new layer of glue.

Fortunately I never had a tire roll off the rim, but I was following a friend when he went into a sharp corner and one of his tires rolled of the rim. After that I spent even more time making sure my gluing job was good.

To rephrase and reiterate my previous statement, are you seriously suggesting that the OP should tour from Canada to Mexico on tubular tires? Or, is this reminiscing?
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Old 10-20-21, 03:24 PM
  #61  
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Originally Posted by Tourist in MSN
Are you serious, tubular tires for touring?
In a world without thorns I'd love to. If tire wires and glass were gone too they'd be heavenly. In the world as we know it I don't even seriously consider it. Maybe if I never rode in thorn country...

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Old 10-20-21, 04:20 PM
  #62  
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Originally Posted by bheinemann
Wondering if anyone has any opinion on any mods you would make that would help with the hilly climbing I'm going to run into, especially in Northern CA? In particular, the bike came stock with 38mm tires (Pathfinder Pro) and DT Swiss G540 rims on front and back.

Run smaller tires? Change to different rims? Just leave it as is and get light bags? (many of you have mentioned the bags you have which is awesome)
The Pathfinder Pro is an excellent choice for actual mixed-gravel riding: solid center rib gives it one of the lower rolling resistance figures on pavement in the gravel segment, the side microknobs reportedly steer decently well in pea gravel, and they're reasonably tough. For the coastal route you're planning - 100% paved unless you go out of your way to change that - you could save some watts with a racy tire like the versatile, tough, and very fast GP5000TL, perhaps make more miles and longer days as an athletic challenge.

OTOH you might find (like I did) there's more overall satisfaction to stay with a particular group of riders you meet along the way, in which case little details like rolling resistance hardly matter as you'll pace the slowest rider in the group. This particular route is a busy one, and very social in the group hiker-biker sites. But if you're actually credit-carding and staying at motels, you might miss this part of the party and not fall into a group...

If you keep asking here in this traditional touring forum, a lot of rec's will come down to traditional tubed Schwalbe Marathon tires, which are tough and long-lived and well-proven though relatively draggy. Personally I'd tour tubeless at this point for the reduction in nuisance flats, especially at the relatively light total weight you're likely to have. You have 9 months - ride the Pathfinders on some loaded weekend test tours and see how it goes.

Re gearing, I personally think grinding is a crime against knees and happiness so I'd advise having some granny in reserve. You will not get to a traditional 18 gear inch granny without a crank change (not trivial given the non-standard GRX chainline). You've got 25-120 gear inches as-is; you can get down to 21.25 g.i. with a smaller 35mm tire and 11-40 cassette (most people are able to get this to work despite exceeding Shimano specs - either stock or with a Roadlink/Goatlink and maybe adding a link or two to the chain). I have 20 g.i. on my gravel/bikepacking bike and I'm very happy with it loaded on steep norcal gravel roads.

The DT Swiss wheels are fine. Traditional heavyweight touring (think 100+ lbs bike+ load) used to eat spokes and wheels for lunch, but your moderate load isn't going to stress these much. Next year, find a good wheelbuilder to check the tension, tighten and even them up. Some machine built wheels have imbalances from the factory, but all wheels tend to settle in after use. I've had good luck with the machine-built 32H DT Swiss wheels that came on my Salsa Vaya, even with 80 lbs bike+load. Those even had aluminum nipples (not good for serviceability, tend to weld in place then twist off when adjusted) - I didn't find that detail in a quick search on your Diverge. That's one detail to check on.

Hope that helps
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Old 10-21-21, 12:28 AM
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Holy geez fourfa, such good, practical and down to earth suggestions and comments, all of which I agree on
I especially loved the comment about too high gearing being an affront to knees and happiness , my views also, this made me laugh and it's so so true.

Heck. This guy could use 35 or 32 nice rolling tires, I personally would use my 32 Supremes, just because I have so much positive touring experience on Supremes, and the 32 are really nice on a road bike with a light load.
I toured a lot on 28 slicks , down the west coast too, so a 32, 35 slick would be fine, but your comments on lowering gearing are very pertinent I hope he listens.
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Old 10-21-21, 03:43 PM
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Thank you taking the time to respond to my questions so thoroughly...really appreciate it. I have some practice runs to do I think!
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