C&O: Gravel bike, XC Mountain Bike, or Cyclocross bike?

Gravel and cross would be more versatile, so going with the mountain bike would be the best option only if you decide you want to get into it. It really is fun, but yeah, mostly you need to drive to somewhere like Wakefield or Fountainhead.

You can also do some light mountain biking with a cross bike. I did the Wakefield trails with my the Bianchi Volpe I used to have by way of training for Monster Cross. It’s jarring and more squirrely, but certainly doable.

I’ve always thought of cross bikes as road bikes with clearance for knobbie tires and gravel bikes have a relaxed geometry as well as clearance for knobbie tires

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@jrenaut 145524 wrote:

I’d be interested in what the difference is. I had always thought a gravel bike was a cross bike with knobby tires. Which is still a cross bike.

Geometry is the different between the two bikes. Gravel bikes tend to have longer chainstays and higher head tubes. Many have rack and fender mounts. They are made for all day (or multi-day) riding. A cyclocross bike, especially a higher end race oriented one, is typically going to have shorter chainstays, longer top tubes, lower bottom brackets for cornering and you’re lucky if it even has bottle mounts on it. All day comfort is sacrificed for speed. After all a cross race is usually an hour or less.

Take all that with a grain of salt as there are lots of “cyclocross” bikes that are less racy and more “gravel” style and there gravel bikes totally geared toward racing.

Best advice, go ride and see what you like!

@Jason 145534 wrote:

Thanks Hozn, great advice, but the CAAD10 has ultegra brakes, 25’s BARELY fit. Shimano says 25 is the max, 28’s a no-go. Good advice though, because I AM trying to steer away from an additional bike. I can get a Raleigh RX 2.0 2017 for around $900 (Cross bike, SRAM 1x, TRP Mechanical disks). I already have a spare set of XT MTB pedals from when I commuted, so the only additional investment would be the bike itself. Not sure if being able to ride the C&O is worth it enough to get a seperate bike. Hmmmmm.

If you have sufficient frame/fork clearance for a 28, what about just getting a new set of brake calipers known for better clearance? That should be a small investment, comparatively.

Just throwing it out there. Obviously I want to encourage n+1, though!

Just do a quick fixie conversion with 28s. Then you won’t need brakes.:rolleyes:

If you go the hardtail MTB route, consider getting a 29er. It’s a lot easier to get tires as skinny as 35 on that size wheel.

Another “what hozn said”: For *just* the C&O I would probably just try to shove 28/30s in there!

But for n+1, I guess I would consider whether you might like/enjoy gravel/dirt riding more or MTBing more. Obviously you can ride a MTB on gravel, although it’s a little slower. CX/gravel bike on singletrack is a bit tougher, esp if you’re not great with MTB skills (like me).

There are all sorts of things that go into different bike designs but I can’t say whether they make that much difference. (I simply haven’t ridden enough bikes!)

A CX bike will generally be more aggressive than a gravel/adventure bike (lower stack, longer reach, steeper angles), and have a higher bottom bracket. It only really needs to clear 35mm tires, and is designed for quick handling, stiffness and light weight over comfort, and doesn’t always have rack, fender or even bottle cage mounts. The top tube is sometimes shaped specifically for shouldering and sometimes cables are run over the toptube so they’re not as exposed to dirt/mud from under the bike. It’s probably more similar to a crit road bike really. The trend lately is to have 1x gearing since the gearing range needed in a CX race isn’t that large, but even before that, 46/36 was a common chainring set up. Bikes are weight weenied and tubulars are the norm for competitive racers. Expensive CX tires are a little odd in that they’re so very specific in purpose: CX often has slippery but not sharp surfaces (grass, mud, dirt, sand – sure, but less rocks, roots, gravel) so they’re not particularly puncture resistant, they have smaller knobs and since they’re also made to be light and supple the knobs you need for races don’t usually last long on pavement (nor sharp gravel rides).

A gravel/adventure bike is more similar to an “endurance” road bike but usually with 40mm+ tire clearances. So – more stack, less reach (significantly taller headtubes), longer chainstays and lower BBs. More stable handling, ability to ride longer more comfortably (possibly in aero positions, and in pacelines). Gearing will usually be wider, although with 10-42 cassettes and such nowadays, 1x is popular. Frame shapes can be a bit more varied since there’s no shouldering of the bike – OTOH, fitting frame bags/packs and multiple water bottles is important. Tires need to be tougher through the casing and running them tubeless is popular.

A touring bike will almost always have full fender and rack mounts and the frame/tube shape/sizes will probably be chosen to be a little stiffer/tougher, to handle heavier loads. So it’ll be a heavier frame. It’ll likely have the widest gearing – a triple or double, and touring bikes also tend to use older, burlier components for durability + serviceability: bar end shifters, mechanical discs over hydraulic discs, etc. And steel is the most popular frame material for the same reasons.

Compared to an all-out road racing bike, I think the CX bike was seen by bike manufacturers as the best “speedy” commuter alternative so they were often marketed as dual duty, especially for commuters who liked to dabble in CX and wanted a bike a little less single-purpose than a pure CX race bike. But since “endurance road” and now gravel bikes are their own categories I think there’s a little more consistency in what you might expect out of a bike category… a little more.

Just to follow up on the idea of 28mm tires, it looks like from this thread http://weightweenies.starbike.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=104735 that maybe pre-2013 versions of the CAAD10 may not have clearance for 28mm. (But it sounds like there are several reports of people running 28mm tires on the more recent CAAD10 frames, which suggests that if you also have a newer frame it might be simply a matter of finding a set of calipers known to provide a little more clearance. It obviously depends on where the tire is making contact too. And of course measured size is not the same as nominal size; if you have wide rims then a 25mm might be measuring closer to 28mm, etc.)