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Is Gravel a Fraud?

Anonymous Fri 28 Feb 2020 18:33:03 No.1455189 View View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>1455191 >>1455193 >>1455204 >>1455207 >>1455231 >>1455246 >>1455310 >>1455384 >>1455526 >>1456496

Peter Stetina, the most famous of the recent World Tour pros to retire to gravel is riding a toad bike with wide tires in his next gravel race.
instead of using Canyons dedicated gravel bike he has outfitted a Canyon Ultimate for off road use.

Pic related is the setup.

If you are fastest on a nice CF Roadframe with wide tires why buy a gravel bike at all?

https://www.cyclingnews.com/features/peter-stetinas-gravel-adapted-canyon-ultimate-cf-slx-gallery/

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO canyon-grail-0102-ed-cxmagazine- (...).jpg, 269KiB, 1280x843

Anonymous Fri 28 Feb 2020 18:35:12 No.1455190 Report

Quoted By: >>1455207 >>1455384 >>1456307

This would have been the Gravel option. The Canyon Grail

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 28 Feb 2020 18:37:08 No.1455191 Report

Quoted By: >>1455197

>>1455189
What kind of basically pavement grabel is he riding?
I mean yeah you can ride grabel on 28s, but nice very quickly.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 28 Feb 2020 18:38:23 No.1455193 Report

Quoted By: >>1455371

>>1455189
Peter Stetina weighs 140 lbs, when you’re that light you can get away with pretty skinny tires on gravel.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 28 Feb 2020 18:57:28 No.1455197 Report

Quoted By: >>1455228 >>1455371

>>1455191
Actually most gravel races are on pretty smooth trails apparently. I'd assume he'd change tyres or even use that gravel bike if he race had any rocky or other rough parts

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 28 Feb 2020 19:19:07 No.1455204 Report

Quoted By:

>>1455189
>If you are fastest on a nice CF Roadframe with wide tires why buy a gravel bike at all?
If you can't figure out the answer to this on your own, that's a sign that you need to unrace yourself.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 28 Feb 2020 19:36:00 No.1455207 Report

Quoted By:

>>1455189
Gravel is for unracers (people who hate bikes and think the word "cyclist" is an insult). It would make sense that someone who cares about results rather than image would go for something that gets results instead of catering to an image

>>1455190
Techbrocore, goes great with nootropics, casual racism, and Tesla branded athleisure garments

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 28 Feb 2020 21:00:29 No.1455228 Report

Quoted By: >>1455251 >>1455371

>>1455197
Depends on location, I guess, since here in Oregon every gravel race I've been involved with has XC sections and some are telling people that 38mm is the bare minimum that they'll be allowed to ride on, and that 42 or wider is highly recommended. It's kinda annoying because aside from a few miles of rowdy shit, the courses are mostly doable on 28 or even 25

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 28 Feb 2020 21:11:32 No.1455231 Report

Quoted By:

>>1455189
>If you are fastest on a nice CF Roadframe with wide tires why buy a gravel bike at all?
potentially so the rear tire can be wide enough, but I thought everyone already knew gravel was road but wide tires and sometimes different gearing?

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 28 Feb 2020 21:55:37 No.1455246 Report

Quoted By: >>1455947

>>1455189
Putting cross tires on a road frame is exactly what cyclocross does. Nothing new.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 28 Feb 2020 22:07:25 No.1455251 Report

Quoted By: >>1455371

>>1455228
That’s the same thing I’ve encountered here in the Appalachians. Most of the race is tame and even at my size (193 cm / 87 kgs) I’m more than fine on my cx bike with 33mm tires, but there’s always a few short sections of absolutely obliterated road or singletrack that beats the crap out of me.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 29 Feb 2020 00:05:08 No.1455286 Report

Quoted By: >>1455323

Lmao look at his leglet gearing

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO 1561128414975.png, 10KiB, 427x451

Anonymous Sat 29 Feb 2020 02:12:05 No.1455310 Report

Quoted By: >>1455320

Gravel riding is just road riding except dirtier and bumpier. Bike mfgs love it because it means everyone needs to buy a new bike because they can't cram 40mm tires in their old road bike .

>>1455189
>current year
>owning a canyon
LOL

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 29 Feb 2020 02:53:28 No.1455320 Report

Quoted By:

>>1455310
After Peter Stetina left the Trek world team he became sponsored by Canyon. He doesn't own any of them.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 29 Feb 2020 02:58:25 No.1455323 Report

Quoted By:

>>1455286
>leglet gearing

Thats a full size road double up front, opposite of leglet.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 29 Feb 2020 06:13:26 No.1455371 Report

Quoted By: >>1455373

>>1455193
for soft-but-not-chunky surfaces, yeah, rider weight is a huge deal. If he's doing a bike for a smoother event, it's not surprising he's picked a bike that's he's already comfortable on.

>>1455197
>Actually most gravel races are on pretty smooth trails apparently.

"apparently"? So you've never done any gravel events?

Gravel events span the whole spectrum from relatively smooth to big chunk.

Some of the iobraskas events - the ones the are suddenly getting a lot of attention from retired pros - are on the smooth end of things. Some deep gravel pits, some softer dirt if it's rained recently, maybe some sharp rocks that'll slice tires, but nothing technically challenging.

the coastal gravel scenes are much more technically challenging than the midwest. You can do *most* of the Oregon Outback or Lost&Found or whatever 28s, but there are chunks of the course that you'd have to pick your way along very carefully - definitely not rideable at race pace on skinny tires.

>>1455228
>>1455251
>t's kinda annoying because aside from a few miles of rowdy shit, the courses are mostly doable on 28 or even 25

yeah but that's the whole point of gravel riding/racing: blazes routes through areas that don't have nice smooth connections between all the roads. If you wanna go fast on 25s, there are plenty of other events that you can do. If you want to climb forgotten logging roads through mountain passes in beautiful forests, live with the wider/heavier tires.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 29 Feb 2020 06:21:04 No.1455373 Report

Quoted By: >>1455845

>>1455371
One gravel race I did would have been fine on 28s for all 80 miles except for one 500 yard section of a completely washed out road. That is what I am talking about, not multiple instances of really rough road.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 29 Feb 2020 07:45:56 No.1455377 Report

Quoted By: >>1455408

I don't think people realise how rough you can go even on a road bike with 25.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 29 Feb 2020 08:30:15 No.1455382 Report

Quoted By:

For a race narrower tires and less comfy ride is probably faster, especially if majority of the event is on relatively good roads. Why you'd buy a gravel bike is because you want to enjoy riding on gravel. Yes it's very much possible to ride gravel on 28s but it's not as comfy as on a well rolling pair of ~40s.

If he wasn't restrained by sponsorship his fastest option would be those absurdly wide 32 mm outer width light bicycle rims with some nice 30 mm tires. On whatever frame that would take that combo. With clip on aero bars.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 29 Feb 2020 08:35:07 No.1455384 Report

Quoted By: >>1455386

Why does >>1455190 look more roadish than >>1455189 ?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 29 Feb 2020 08:46:44 No.1455386 Report

Quoted By:

>>1455384
It doesn't

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 29 Feb 2020 09:16:23 No.1455395 Report

Quoted By: >>1455426 >>1455430 >>1456308

daily reminder that 28mm is faster than 25 or 23

https://www.bicyclerollingresistance.com/specials/conti-gp4000s-ii-23-25-28

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 29 Feb 2020 10:58:52 No.1455408 Report

Quoted By:

>>1455377
You can ride 25s on anything but you’ll eventually reach a point where wider tires are faster because you’re just fighting a bucking bronco

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 29 Feb 2020 12:48:29 No.1455426 Report

Quoted By: >>1455519

>>1455395
Daily reminder that most road bikes come with 28 and you are just salty and poor, also you dropped your trip grant

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 29 Feb 2020 13:34:03 No.1455430 Report

Quoted By: >>1455519

>>1455395
daily reminder that the literal one watt you saved in rolling resistance by going to 28mm gets sucked up again and then some because now you've completely fucked the aerodynamics of the wheel.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 29 Feb 2020 19:20:35 No.1455519 Report

Quoted By:

>>1455426
My road bike came with 28mm tires

>>1455430
lol

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 29 Feb 2020 19:35:00 No.1455526 Report

Quoted By: >>1455527 >>1455564

>>1455189
>CF Roadframe with wide tires

A gravel bike is effectively a road bike with wider tires.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 29 Feb 2020 19:36:25 No.1455527 Report

Quoted By: >>1455564

>>1455526
This is correct, similar to how gravel racing is just road racing on unpaved surfaces.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 29 Feb 2020 22:34:46 No.1455564 Report

Quoted By: >>1455581

>>1455526
They're turning into XC bikes tho
>>1455527
Less pack riding in gravel. Some races have none. I'm doing Skull later this year and from what I've heard it's such a bitch of a ride that everyone winds up riding alone.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 29 Feb 2020 23:58:16 No.1455581 Report

Quoted By: >>1455587

>>1455564
In my experience it depends on the race, I've done some that have a lead group of a few dozen guys and others have been hours of me riding alone. It usually depends on how much elevation the course has, of course some people will get dropped on the climbs but from what I've seen way more people get dropped on gravel descents than road descents. I like it more than road racing because it's not just 1) sit on your hands until you try to establish a breakaway or 2) sit on your hands until the field sprint at the end

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 01 Mar 2020 00:13:19 No.1455587 Report

Quoted By: >>1455718 >>1455721

>>1455581
Yeah it's a hell of a lot more fun than road racing. Last year I did the Oregon Gravel Epic on a bike with 28s, and was in the lead group until a long climbing section with big chonky asshole rocks. Had to walk it and fucked up a cleat, which meant I couldn't clip in and couldn't pedal right. Was kinda mad because I'd been told that there was nothing gnarlier than Lief Erickson trail in PDX, which is trivial on 28s so long as it's dry enough. Otherwise I'd have done it with pinned flats. This year I'm bringing a fullsus XC bike with 2.1" tires, which is total overkill and will suck dickballs on the tarmac sections, but it's the bike I'm doing the Skull with.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 01 Mar 2020 10:13:29 No.1455718 Report

Quoted By: >>1455727 >>1455736 >>1455920

>>1455587
every time i do a gravel event and see a roadie take off the front at the start of the event and then lose a ton of time walking part of the course and/or suffering totally foreseeable equipment failures, i cackle wildly. Even moreso when they wildly overcompensate at the next event. a tale as old as time.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 01 Mar 2020 10:29:52 No.1455721 Report

Quoted By:

>>1455587
We're you running road pedals or did you somehow manage to fuck up MTB cleats?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 01 Mar 2020 11:02:15 No.1455727 Report

Quoted By:

>>1455718
>I need to ride 100 miles on smooth ground with a full suspension mtb and fat tires because there's 300 yards of rocky bit at the end
>I need to buy a full sized Hummer to drive my kids to school because there might be a big snowstorm in January

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 01 Mar 2020 12:15:11 No.1455736 Report

Quoted By: >>1455777

>>1455718
In my experience some promoters will tell prospective entrants that the minimum recommended tire size is much smaller than what I would recommend anyone use. I think this might be either due to the desire to attract more participants or simply because the promoter is a lightweight person and is simply giving their personal recommendation. Gravel road conditions are continually changing so I never listen to these recommendations and instead go overboard in nearly all instances with 650b x 48mm tires. But so far I’ve never had a flat, busted a rim, or had to get off my bike save for a few creek crossings. Also in my experience, all of the guys in the front group are roadies, though some are better equipped for the course than others. Unless someone is woefully under-tired, superior fitness still wins these races.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 01 Mar 2020 13:36:11 No.1455777 Report

Quoted By: >>1455778

>>1455736
>superior fitness still wins these races
No! You don't say?!

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 01 Mar 2020 13:37:09 No.1455778 Report

Quoted By:

>>1455777
That is what I said, yes. Is there anything else you would like to know about gravel racing?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 01 Mar 2020 17:30:44 No.1455845 Report

Quoted By: >>1455849 >>1455920 >>1456071

>>1455373
why not just use an xc mtb

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 01 Mar 2020 17:34:15 No.1455849 Report

Quoted By:

>>1455845
Because using a road bike with 28mm tires was faster for the other 140,300 yards of the race. A road bike with 40mm tires would have been fine as well, if not better. A mtb would be ungodly slow in comparison.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 01 Mar 2020 21:28:21 No.1455920 Report

Quoted By:

>>1455718
Ya I know that the XC bike is an overcompensation for the Gravel Epic, where I would have been okay last year if I'd just brought pinned flats for that one shitty 2 mile climb, or wider tires, but this year I'm using it as a gear check for the Skull, which actually needs something more along those lines due to being closer to an endurance MTB event. A couple of years ago it was won by a guy on an Salsa Cutthroat with 2.1" knobbies, despite the 20 miles of tarmac at the end. I'll be happy with a sub-10h finish. I don't have a chance in hell of winning, tho, not with pros showing up left and right, probably doped to the gills because there's zero controls on that in gravel. I wouldn't be surprised if pro involvement is the dead canary in the coal mine for gravel racing, leading to USAC and UCI taking over and strangling it. It might be wise for some events to bar entry to sponsored pros to keep the grassroots feel alive.
>>1455845
Because the XC bike is going to be suckier on climbs and tarmac, no matter how aggressively you set it up, and you're going to lose speed to poor aero. The tradeoff is that if there are long tough sections and semi-technical descents, you'll be the fastest. It's about the course and what compromises you want to make. Bring a gravel bike and you're going to be slower on the rowdy sections and descents than the XC guys, and slower on tarmac than the roadies. Bring a road bike and you might get hosed completely, or you might be faster than anyone else. BWR is winnable on 28s, so that's what the pros are going to bring.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 01 Mar 2020 23:46:44 No.1455947 Report

Quoted By: >>1456042

>>1455246
No its not

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 02 Mar 2020 06:53:18 No.1456042 Report

Quoted By: >>1456043

>>1455947
if its not that, whats the difference between cyclocross and a road bike with cross tires?

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 02 Mar 2020 07:04:58 No.1456043 Report

Quoted By:

>>1456042
cx bikes typically have less bb drop and slacker hta than road. gravel splits the difference by going back to road bb drop but keeping slacker hta, except for models that are closer to xc geo

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 02 Mar 2020 07:38:36 No.1456052 Report

Quoted By:

Honestly I feel like 650B low trail is a fraud for anyone that isn't a clyde. Low trail handles poorly on rough surfaces. 700x32 is good enough for paved roads and hardpacked dirt.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 02 Mar 2020 09:37:26 No.1456071 Report

Quoted By: >>1456146

>>1455845
as the other anons said, mtbs are much slower in every single gravel race and infact there is hardly and xc race where a gravel bike wouldn't dominate either

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 02 Mar 2020 19:20:55 No.1456146 Report

Quoted By:

>>1456071
You need to do more xc races

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 02 Mar 2020 22:25:49 No.1456231 Report

Quoted By: >>1456265 >>1456292

gravel racing was invented by people who suck at road, cx, and xc but still need to feel validation while looking smug on a chaise lounge that someone trucked out onto a dirt road

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 03 Mar 2020 00:29:25 No.1456265 Report

Quoted By:

>>1456231
But now roadies and endurance mtbers have entered the fray and are shitting on everyone

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 03 Mar 2020 02:11:36 No.1456292 Report

Quoted By: >>1456298 >>1456301 >>1456314

>>1456231

Or maybe, gravel racing was invented because there are a ton of gravel roads and road bikes with skinny tires just fall when riding upon them.

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO str8pride.jpg, 78KiB, 750x764

Anonymous Tue 03 Mar 2020 02:42:10 No.1456298 Report

Quoted By:

>>1456292
Or maybe it's because filthy casuals wanted to "get in on this whole bikes thing" and "finally get into shape" but anti-cycling propaganda told them "road bikes are for fucking faggots" so they bought what was sold to them as basically a macho man MTB but with drop bars even though it's really an endurance geometry road bike that's literally the exact same size tires as the ones that come on the normal road bike except they have a tread pattern because slicks are for fucking faggots and do I look gay to you like one of those lance armstrong faggots? No of course not I am VERY VERY STRAIGHT ok?

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 03 Mar 2020 02:55:09 No.1456301 Report

Quoted By:

>>1456292
Gravel roads have zero redeeming features other than lower vehicle traffic. It's just dust, rocks, tractors, and endless cornfields. Unless you're a farmer or want to visit some isolated rural town with a population of 20, there's no good reason to ever be on them.

t. grew up in rural nebraska

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 03 Mar 2020 03:05:51 No.1456307 Report

Quoted By:

>>1455190
>tfw you use your canyon grail on road more than on gravel

Probably should have just gotten the endurace. Though I've gotten a chicks number cause she thought the flight deck bars were cool.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 03 Mar 2020 03:11:30 No.1456308 Report

Quoted By:

>>1455395
daily reminder all tires sizes are the same speed

https://www.bicyclerollingresistance.com/specials/grand-prix-5000-comparison#drop45

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 03 Mar 2020 03:23:57 No.1456314 Report

Quoted By:

>>1456292
lolno, few gravel races get as gnarly as races like Paris-Roubaix. They're mostly on the level of Strade Bianche. They sprung up because CX guys were bored and looking for something to do on the off-season without having to pick up a grody mountain bike. Then it got popular with normies because there's no rules about what kind of bike you bring, no categories, no team riding, no real regulations or anything. It gave the people who couldn't quite hack it in organized racing a chance at the pointy end, while giving the justride crowd a chance to say they were in a bike race while babbling to their bored date over craft beer. This isn't a bad thing, as there's still fun to be had for the racers who get dropped, and fun to be had for the mullet crowd. It's fun for everyone! Which is something that USAC and UCI events mostly fail at. Doesn't help that USAC was strangling local organizations even before socjus and their pet trannies arrived to cause shitstorms and alienate everyone for no good reason.

Eventually I expect the big gravel events to turn into events like P-R. One day for the pr0s, one day for justriders and amateur tryhards.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 03 Mar 2020 19:28:20 No.1456496 Report

Quoted By: >>1456516

>>1455189
Stetina won the Super Sweetwater Grasshopper gravel race with this bike on Saturday

https://www.velonews.com/2020/03/gravel/stetina-faulkner-win-super-sweetwater-grasshopper-gravel-race_505686

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 03 Mar 2020 20:57:04 No.1456516 Report

Quoted By:

>>1456496
That's a road race with a "gravel" section that they had to close: https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/stetina-i-had-to-hit-worldtour-level-watts-to-take-grasshopper-win/
>Although the 145km race took place mostly on pavement after the final gravel climb had to be scrapped because of road closures...

Anonymous

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Anonymous Tue 03 Mar 2020 21:03:25 No.1456517 Report

Quoted By:

all you need is a road bike that can fit up to 32c tires with some clearance.

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