Do We Even Need Gravel Bikes? Why I Race Gravel on a Drop Bar MTB

all right finally it's time to talk about The Good the Bad and the Ugly emphasis on the ugly of the drop bar hard tail that I race this season as a professional gravel racer whose primary concern is speed in fact I think you could probably say that's my only concern I chose to race a drop bar hard tail mountain bike at certain gravel races where the rest of my competition were all on traditional gravel bikes and I use this bike at certain mountain bike races where the rest of my competition were on regular mountain bikes why despite what you may think this was not for publicity or to make some sort of statement or to get more views on YouTube or even for Comfort or for a more enjoyable riding experience this was because I thought that this bike would get me from the starting line to the Finishing Line in as little time as possible and that's what we're going to be talking about today and at the end of the video I'll be discussing whether the category of drop bar mountain bike should be embraced by the cycling indust industry and whether or not this style of bike will slowly replace the traditional gravel bike I can feel your eyes rolling through the camera already welcome back to the channel this video is fueled by the feed drop bar mountain bikes are not something new that I invented this is actually a pretty common bike setup to see in ultra distance off-road races like the tour divide however you rarely see them in shorter distance races and especially not being used by Pros shorter is a relative term here some of the races I use this bike for are over a 100 miles long now certainly part of the reason you don't see Pros on bikes like this is because they have sponsors and bike companies don't sell drop bar mountain bikes fortunately my sponsor Factor doesn't mind me taking their beautiful Factor Lando hard tail and turning it into this unsightly Franken bike in the pursuit of the fastest possible bike setup the other reason that might surprise some people is that generally Pros are not as big a bike bike nerds as you might think well probably the more accurate statement is they're not as nerdy as I am and generally they just ride with they're given I think the even more accurate statement would be that they're not as big of a pain in the ass can you imagine sponsoring this dude even if their sponsors would let them experiment with their equipment they either don't do it because they don't have the interest or they just assume that whatever bike setup everyone else is running is the fastest setup and sometimes they're right about that but if you haven't noticed at this point I'm that guy who's constantly questioning the status quo and trying to find an advantage that my competitors haven't found yet and being that gravel is a fairly new sport there are a lot of them before I get into the specifics of this bike let's talk about why I would even choose a drop bar mountain bike for gravel racing or mountain bike racing in the first place anyone who races or follows gravel racing knows that the terrain of a gravel race course varies wildly you of course that are mostly pavement with maybe a few light gravel sections all the way to courses that have mountain bike style single track or Jeep roads and extremely rough gravel and of course you have everything in between given this it only makes sense that a wide variety of bikes are needed to race gravel at the highest level sure you could probably get by if you just had a generic one-size fits-all gravel bike but if you wanted the optimal bike for every course then it would probably make sense to have something like an endurance road bike with wide tire clearance for Tame courses a gravel bike for most courses and a drop bar mountain bike for courses that are so rough that they're knocking on the door of just simply being called a mountain bike race or mountain bike races that are so tame that they could justifiably be called gravel races this is probably a good time to point out that whatever label a race promoter chooses for their race will determine what bike almost every race racer shows up with just as an example the Leadville 100 is a mountain bike race because when the race was created gravel bikes didn't even exist yet I personally think that if the race was put on for the first time in 2023 they would call it a gravel race everyone would show up on gravel bikes and you'd be the crazy one for showing up on a mountain bike on the other side one of the races that I did this summer The Big Horn gravel grinder was as the name suggests a gravel race but had numerous single track sections that were honestly much worse than anything that you see at Leadville as well as extremely rough gravel sections but sure enough because of how it's advertised almost every racer showed up with their gravel bike even though that was probably not the right bike for the job now personally I couldn't care less what the race calls itself Road mountain bike gravel whatever zwift straa to the coffee shop on a recovery ride against old ladies riding beach cruisers on the bike path what too much I just want the fastest bike that the rules of the race will allow period this of course is why I was such a big fan of using Arrow bars for gravel racing that is until almost every gravel race Bann them nothing wrong with that if it's written in the rule book then I'll conform but it just means that I'll have to do a little bit more thinking outside the box to get that advantage and that's exactly how I see using drop bar mountain bike for gravel racing now obviously a drop bar mountain bike has suspension but the main advantage to using one comes from The Wider tires using a fast pair of CrossCountry mountain bike tires will actually generally give you a lower rolling resistance than the equivalent gravel Tire half of you are probably looking at me like I just said the Earth was flat so let me explain I've tested this personally and this has been confirmed by bicycle rolling resistance.com generally a fast pair of CrossCountry mountain bike tires can get away with using a thinner casing without increasing the puncture risk because the volume of the tire is so much higher and generally a thinner casing means a faster Tire in fact the casing of a tire actually has a bigger impact on rolling resistance than the tread pattern does most people will try to determine how fast a tire is by looking at how smooth it is I'm just going to put this bluntly if you're doing that you're showing that you know almost nothing about Tire rolling resistance o damn sick burn dude I mean God forbid I don't know anything about Tire rolling resistance case in point the max is refuse which is about as slick as can be but has such a thick casing that it's just about the slowest gravel tire that you can buy but at least you won't puncture which brings me back to mountain bike tires not only is the rolling resistance low lower but the puncture risk is also lower it's a win-win however it's not a winwin win there is a drawback to having wider knober tires and that is reduced aerodynamics in the Wind Tunnel silkon I found that at 35 km per hour a 10 mm increase in Tire width cost about 5 Watts a 55mm mountain bike tire is 10 to 15 mm bigger than a standard gravel tire and has more aggressive knobs so there is certainly an arrow penalty and on top of that a drop bar mountain bike is not as Arrow as a gravel bike so if you take into account the whole package we could easily be talking about a 10 to 20 watt difference between the two bikes at high speeds this means that choosing between these bikes greatly depends on the demands of the course the smoother and faster the course becomes the less rolling resistance matters and the more Arrow matters and the more the scales tip in favor of the gravel bike but on rougher and slower courses the reverse is true and the drop bar mountain bike becomes more advantageous then on the other side of the coin we have easy mountain bike races well at least technically easy I think Keegan Swenson might be the only one who thinks that climbing up to nearly 13,000 ft in the middle of the Leadville 100 is physically easy on flat bars 2 no less I mean come on does this guy even watch your videos oh no that's right he's too busy winning why would anyone choose to ride a drop bar mountain bike for a race that may not require a lot of handling skills but is still considered a mountain bike race again it all comes down to aerodynamics I really don't think I need to convince you that a drop bar position is more aerodynamic than a standard flat bar mountain bike position I think every serious cyclist already knows that however a lot of people probably assume that the speeds in these races are so low that it doesn't really matter anyway well we can can take some of the data that I got in the wind tunnel to try to figure this out at 25 km/ hour or 15.5 milph which is a very respectable average speed for a race like Leadville and is actually not even as fast as the winning speed from this year you would save five Watts going from the hoods position to the drops position which is over 6 minutes over a 100 mile distance and let's not forget that the hoods position is still more aerodynamic than the mountain bike position now we do have to factor in that races like Leadville are not done on a flat Road there's climbing and descending and breaking and cornering but regardless there is no doubt that there is still some savings if not a lot of savings to be had by the improved aerodynamic position before the race I actually calculated the difference taking into account the speed of every section including the time lost on the technical downhill sections with the drop bars and taking out the sections that were smooth enough that that you could do them in the puppy paw position or elbows on the bar position regardless of what bar you chose and I pegged the difference at around 6 minutes in favor of the drop bars 6 minutes may not sound like a ton over the course of a 6h hour race but for me personally 6 minutes would be the difference between getting the 17th Place finish that I got and 21st place so four spots this doesn't mean it would be faster for everyone though the choice to run drop bars or standard mountain bike bars for a mountain bike race really comes down to how technically challenging the course is and this is going to vary from person to person and depend on how much experience and confidence you have using drop bars for me personally I practiced enough on drop bars before Leadville that I actually got my downhill times pretty much spot on with my flat Bar times from the previous year and I actually got a faster time on the drop bars this year on the most technical Descent of the race making the decision to use them an obvious one for me however it may not be that straightforward for everyone all right I've been blabbing a lot in this video about stuff you've already heard me talk about all summer long in these race report videos but let's actually get into the details of this particular drop bar mountain bike setup starting with the frame I used the factor Lando hardtail mountain bike frame and something that a lot of people have asked me is whether or not I use a different size frame than I normally would for this drop bar setup the answer is no I still use the same medium siiz frame that I would with flat bars however I do use a shorter stem to compensate for the longer reach of the drops so I go with a 70 mm stem instead of the typical 90 mm stem that I used on this bike when it had flat bars the bars are 40 cm wide which may seem narrow but to put that into perspective I use 36 CM bars on my gravel bike so these bars are actually significant ific anly wider and that is for improved handling on technical terrain along that same Vein The Reach from the saddle to the bars is about 20 mm shorter on this bike compared to my gravel bike to further improve the handling the other good thing about this bike is that it accommodates as large as a 42 to chain ring which not many mountain bikes do gearing can obviously be a limiting factor for using a mountain bike in a gravel race you don't want to be spun out and fortunately with a 42 to chain ring and a 10 into 52 cassette and larger diameter tires which increases the gear ratio this gearing is roughly equivalent to using a 48 and 32 tooth chain ring in the front and 11 to 38 too cassette in the rear on a standard gravel bike with 40 mm tires and this means that I'm really not losing anything in terms of gearing and Sham makes it super easy to set up a drop our mountain bike their Eagle AIS mountain bike derailer is designed to pair with Sham Force axis shifters moving on to the tires I have used kti race King 2.2sources like Leadville just so I can get away with running a lower tire pressure the speed that you gain from running a lower tire pressure on rough terrain is vastly more than the speed you lose from adding 60 to 100 G to your bike with the inserts this along with the Sila tire sealant makes this a pretty flat prooof setup the other noteworthy part of the bike is the fork right now I have the bike in more of a mountain bike mode with a standard 100 mm Fox 32 stepcast mountain bike Fork but for some Tamer courses I will put on Fox's 40 mm gravel Fork instead which is a bit lighter and brings the handlebars down and makes the bike feel more like a gravel bike this of course steepens the head angle from 68 and a half degrees to 71 degrees bringing it more in line with a typical gravel bike head angle the seat tube steepens as well but I already put my saddle as far forward as it'll possibly go normally so it's really not a big deal to scoot the saddle back when I use this setup you may have also noticed that I used the fox transfer SL dropper post on this bike in conjunction with their ax lever which is designed for drop bars and allows you to access the dropper post from the hoods or the drops I don't use a dropper post for every race that I do with this bike but for the ones that are more Technical and have longer descents it does help with downhilling speed and it actually makes getting into a super tuck position way easier and safer I could probably go on getting into every little detail of this bike and some of you would probably be into that but some of you are probably thinking that this video is a bit long and rambly already so I'll get to the CR of the video do I think that drop our mountain bikes should be a new category of bike that the bike industry should embrace or will we see gravel bikes look more and more like mountain bikes in the near future after all we're already seeing them get more capable and the current Internet meme about gravel bikes is that they essentially look like mountain bikes from the80s at what point will we just come full circle and realize that we never needed gravel bikes in the first place personally I want to see the gravel category expand most companies have a climbing road bike an arrow road bike and an endurance road bike and on the mountain bike side it gets even crazier with XC bikes trail bikes Enduro bikes downhill bikes down country up country Etc I think the same thing should happen and will happen with gravel as well and we're already seeing it with some companies having two different gravel options for varying terrain I think it makes sense to have an arrow gravel bike for fast races this will essentially look like the company's aerrow Road bike but with much wider Tire clearance you could throw a lightweight gravel bike in there but for the demands of most gravel racing I don't really think it's necessary in the middle you probably have a standard gravel bike that takes into consideration aerodynamics weight comfort and tire clearance but doesn't go overboard on any of those fronts it's the gravel bike that most people will buy and fits the majority of gravel terrain and then I think it would make sense to have an aggressive gravel bike category these bikes would have clear for mountain bike tires slacker angles may come stocked with dropper posts or suspension forks and generally feel more like mountain bikes H so how much do you think the bike industry paid this guy to say all this what I don't want to see is what's already happening with a lot of companies where they have one gravel offering that supposedly does everything you could race Unbound on it or you could go bike packing with it no not into that maybe this is an elitist bike racer take but I personally prefer when a bike does one thing and does that one thing extremely well as opposed to a bike that does a bunch of things kind of good I guess I don't necessarily think that drop bar mountain bikes need to become their own category however I would love to see aggressive gravel bikes become a new category as well as the further categorization of gravel bikes in general just like we see with Road and mountain bikes and this should probably go without saying at this point but this means that I don't think that the gravel bike is going anywhere there are still plenty of courses where a gravel bike as we currently know it is the fastest option and while I do understand that it's just a joke there are a ton of differences between a current gravel bike and a mountain bike from the80s even if the facial hairstyle hasn't changed that much thanks for watching if you want to follow my training racing and weird bike setups closer be sure to check me out on Instagram if you enjoyed this video be sure to give it a like subscribe and share it with your cycling friends I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Dylan Johnson

Views: 339,149

Keywords: gravel, gravel bike, MTB, drop bar MTB, cycling, gravel cycling, gravel pro, lifetime grand prix, pro gravel racing, pro bike check, factor bikes, factor lando, dylan johnson, dylan johnson cycling, conti race king, gravel tires, mtb tires, xc mtb, leadville 100, unbound 200, big horn gravel, factor gravel bike, aero gravel bike, bike industry, fox 32, fox gravel fork, fox transfer sl, gravel suspension

Id: hxNd-uD84PE

Length: 18min 1sec (1081 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 08 2023