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The bonus is that I work on bike handling in sometimes sketchy conditions, the same reason that I regularly ride that bike on the singletrack trails near my house. I kind of like the fact that it’s a bit less stable and more twitchy than a dedicated gravel bike might be. I use one of the cyclocross bikes as my daily driver/pit/training bike, and I’m perfectly happy riding it everywhere, road, cross, and yes, gravel. Should I become a part of this growing trend and plunk down my hard-earned tutoring money for a dedicated gravel bike? My current bike stable is smaller than it’s ever been: two ’cross bikes: one race bike, one training bike, and two mountain bikes. I’m sure that some of you struggle with this dilemma as well. It seems that every brand has at least one these days. I’m noticing an increasing number of “gravel bikes” on most of my rides. I’m sure the UCI’s involvement will only make that more challenging. Do I have the right bike for my ride? Cyclocross has a “run what you brung” ethos, and I hope that the gravel scene can embrace that way of thinking, and not worry so much about definitions. I know people, especially marketing pros at bike companies, want to label rides and bikes, and make people think that it’s black or white.

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Lee Waldman with his Van Dessel Full Tilt Boogie, which handles gravel and cyclocross capably. Here’s this guy jumping on and off his bike and never riding on the asphalt. I’m sure that I must look strange to the passing motorists. Dismount, run 10 strides, remount, pedal 20 revolutions, rinse and repeat. Some day’s I’ll add to that mix by practicing dismounts and remounts. Hey, it’s now a gravel ride! Funny how simply changing the riding surface makes it more interesting. For some perhaps illogical reason, I can’t condone driving to ride gravel. I live in a part of Denver where the bulk of the mountain bike trails I like to ride are 20 minutes from my front door. We try hard to label and define our rides, but as a cyclocrosser, like many of you, we simply like to ride drop bar bikes offroad. Gravel? Dirt road? Mountain bike doubletrack? Straight of a cyclocross course? It doesn’t matter. So much so that I rarely ride on the road anymore. The atmosphere at the events I’ve attended certainly feels much more like a community. Gravel riding and racing, similarly to mountain biking, seems more. Like mountain biking, especially in its early days, gravel offers another way for many of us to reconnect with the joy of simply pedaling a bike. The jury is out on where the other big races will fall. SBT has already said they aren’t interested in simply catering to the elites. The sense of community will be lost in the transition. The races that I love, like SBT GRVL and Roubidoux Quick and Dirty, will have to make a choice: fall in line with the UCI or risk becoming the second tier. Gravel racing will become “pro” and have fewer grassroots.

I fear that the informality and the community feel that attracts riders to gravel racing will quickly disappear under the aegis of UCI. It’s arguably the fastest-growing sector in the cycling world right now, hence the recent news that UCI is planning to incorporate gravel racing into the fold (a few years after CXM predicted USA Cycling and the UCI would head this direction in early April pieces). (Side note: since I started this column she’s borrowed a cyclocross bike, loved it, and has become addicted to cyclocross.) Races or Governing Bodies Do Not Define Gravel She does my dry needling, and at every appointment, I try to convince her to at least try racing on a drop-bar bike. But, I set that aside and explained the differences in geometry, componentry, and ride feel to the best of my ability with that caveat that I use my cyclocross pit bike as my gravel bike with no apparent negative side effects.Ī strong mountain biker, she held her own this season in our Tuesday evening Women B category, while racing on a hardtail mountain bike.

I use my spare cyclocross bike as my road/gravel/pit/training bike. She was curious about the differences between gravel bikes and cyclocross bikes. A few weeks ago, I had an interesting conversation with a newbie woman cyclocross racer.

2022.09