Is a gravel bike slowly reverting back to a mountain bike?

Dave Taylor said:
Is 1x better? It's actually less efficient and the 10 tooth of a 12 speed is actually slower than running a larger chaining and running further up on the cassette. I have done a 1x on the road and if you have any hills I am not really a fan. You have way too large of gaps between gears to the point it always feels like you are in the wrong gear. MTBs do it a bit better but I would argue in the efficiency department a 2x still wins.
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Explain why MTB 1x is better than gravel/road 1x tho, IMO they both suffer from the same thing. I think as a MTBer you don't notice the jumps in the gears as much as the speeds fluctuate a lot more. Plus with MTB, the chain retention outweighs and "efficiency" loss. I think that is more important.

I run 1x on one of my road bikes (the one I do most of my long rides on) and you just need to be more "in tune" with winding out the gear more. So instead of shifting at 90rpms, you shift at 95.
 
Pearl said:
Explain why MTB 1x is better than gravel/road 1x tho, IMO they both suffer from the same thing. I think as a MTBer you don't notice the jumps in the gears as much as the speeds fluctuate a lot more. Plus with MTB, the chain retention outweighs and "efficiency" loss. I think that is more important.

I run 1x on one of my road bikes (the one I do most of my long rides on) and you just need to be more "in tune" with winding out the gear more. So instead of shifting at 90rpms, you shift at 95.
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Complaining about the jumps on 1x as a single-speeder is baffling. If you're riding SS you'll spin between 30 and 160rpm so what's 3 teeth gonna do? 🤣
 
Steve Vai said:
so what's 3 teeth gonna do? 🤣
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Ask this guy.

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I have 1x on my gravel bike and don't mind the jumps too much. On longer road segments I could see the value in 2x with more "in-between" gears. But I'm not racing or trying to put down 20mph/average, I'm like putting around at 13-15mph and that's plenty. If you're really focused on rpm and value efficiency then sure go 2x.
 
Riggedfmx said:
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I really like talking to Josh when he's around. Running bigger cogs for the same gear inches has been established 200 years ago so not sure why it's such a hard sell in the bike industry. They ran 60+ tooth rings in the Giro for exactly this reason. It's been know in the track world since the invention of bicycles.
 
Pearl said:
Explain why MTB 1x is better than gravel/road 1x tho, IMO they both suffer from the same thing. I think as a MTBer you don't notice the jumps in the gears as much as the speeds fluctuate a lot more. Plus with MTB, the chain retention outweighs and "efficiency" loss. I think that is more important.

I run 1x on one of my road bikes (the one I do most of my long rides on) and you just need to be more "in tune" with winding out the gear more. So instead of shifting at 90rpms, you shift at 95.
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Mtb is chain retention and the speed range is way less.
 



That stream crossing looks like such a fun scene. Friend who raced it said that it was a really great way to finish the day. He wound up bagging out early and logged 85 miles/7400' of climbing.
 
Failing on embedding that, but clicking through works. Way too tired/too luddite to fix.
 
scott62 said:
Getting a gravel bike in NJ is like getting a dh bike in Florida…..
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What we do in Jersey isn't an analogue for what's happening everywhere else. Up in VT for example there are miles and miles of dirt road, the seemingly perfect place for a gravel bike, except all of the local guys I ride with just put bigger volume tires on a road bike and call it a day.
 
Captain Brainstorm said:
What we do in Jersey isn't an analogue for what's happening everywhere else. Up in VT for example there are miles and miles of dirt road, the seemingly perfect place for a gravel bike, except all of the local guys I ride with just put bigger volume tires on a road bike and call it a day.
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Or where you live in NJ. There's parts of NJ that have tons of great road & gravel and then parts that are hot garbage. One thing I sorta miss about NJ/PA is the road/gravel riding. In many ways it was easier to access after work as I could just hop on the bike from where I lived and be on great roads within minutes as opposed to sitting in traffic to get to good trails.

I have a decade old cross bike so therefore I just run what I brung and it was my "gravel" bike, before that it was my 23c road bike. But if I only had mountain bikes and wanted to do road/gravel and wasn't trying to keep up with fast groups an actual gravel bike would make sense as a purchase in NJ for the versatility.
 
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