Back to this again!

I can sense the eye-rolling at the mere subject of a one-bike-for-all article..... but please, bear with me. Maybe this is different. The last time we all tried to have one-bike for all and purchased two sets of wheels with different cassettes, we all kinda came unstuck!

It's not easy and maybe it doesn't even work. But we need to get into some nitty gritty to cover this subject properly, so lets dive in.

What are the challenges?

- Where are we talking about, lets be specific
- Who are we riding with
- How fast are we riding on the road
- Is the geometry right for fast riding
- Is the geometry right for off-road riding
- Will my cadence range work for road riding
- Will I have easy enough gears for those off-road gravel climbs at 20%+

A more aero racy fork or a more gravel-focused 'Adventure' fork with more mounting points.  Obviously, given what I'm trying to do here, the slippery, more aero road focused fork would be my choice.

Secondly, what else changed was the arrival of a 13-speed gravel specific WIDE ratio groupset. Yes, SRAM's XPLR Red set-up. This is a possible game-changer as not only does it offer a staggeringly broad range of ratio options which you can use to pair your single chain-ring to your cassette, but it gives a super-smooth cassette ratio at the high-end i.e. a 10T, 11T, 12T, 13T, 15T, 17T, 19T, 21T almost straight-through first 8 sprockets.  Why is this so relevant? Because the challenge has always been, that trying to ride in a fast moving group of roadies at speed, requires small jumps between gears in order to keep your power output within a range your body can handle at those high speed/high cadence sections of your ride.

Ok but there's GRX and Camp EKAR so what's so difference here? Weight..... that's the thing. SRAM RED is damn light. GRX and EKAR whilst great in some ways, just don't offer a high enough spec at a weight that fits both Gravel and Road.

Ok, so lets address the challenges one by one as listed:

Where are we talking about - lets be specific

Ok, lets use two locations that are kind of similar:  Jersey (for your guys) and Italy (for me..).

Jersey: In Jersey you have to content with a lot of short steep climbs when you ride in gravel mode. You also have steep climbs to ride when you are in road road e.g. Bonne Nuit (Ok so we don't choose to ride up Bonne Nuit every week!). But you don't wanna get caught out when your mates decide to throw it into a ride loop and your biggest gear is just not gonna cut it. If you're gonna have 'one bike for all' it's gonna need gears for Bonne Nuit and gears for 50kph!

Then consider that you need to be able to keep up with your pals with a tailwind on the Five Miler in a fast-rotating through & off.  That's gonna need a fairly chunky gear as you're fleetingly gonna hit 50kph! Even if your mates are doing 50kph for 1 minute and you can't keep up, they are gonna disappear in the distance pretty quickly!

For those of us living in Italy: Ok, here it becomes even more challenging. With long mountain and mid-range mountain climbs, one becomes pretty sensitive to your power output at various cadence ranges. If I'm trying to ride at my mate's pace and he is running a standard road set-up of 50/34 paired to an 11-32 cassette, this is what can happen:

My mate pedalling along next to me on a long mountain climb: 
His Gearing: 34x28 @ 85rpm = 13.3kph

Me pedalling along next to him trying to find a rhythm to suit his pace on my SRAM XPLR 1x set-up (ok I've already bought it here in my mind.....):
Option 1: 40x38 @ 98rpm = 13.3kph
Option 2: 40x32 @ 82 rpm = 13.3kph
Option 3: 42x38 @ 93 rpm = 13.3kph 

So in order for me to ride at his pace, I have a choice of cadence variation ranging from 82 - 98 rpm! That's a vast range of options and I suspect there is going to be some jumping around between gears trying to find a comfortable range for my power and cadence.

But it's not impossible. When you consider I'm trying to hypothesise scenarios of group riding whereby a chainring variance of 6 teeth separates 2 very different rider types.  If there is a slight difference in comfort levels on a long climb between us and I end up settling for my more favoured 90rpm range, one of us is going to be waiting for the other at the top of a cold mountain.

My ride is likely nearer 7.5kg so I'll be giving up a little advantage on those long climbs. Before you think it, we both have a bit of a pot-belly and are the wrong end of our 40s so yes this is all relative....

However, his race bike has a fork rake of 43mm (this measures how far forward the front axle sits versus the line/angle of the head tube. My fork rake would be closer to 50mm, contributing to a wheelbase of 1014mm versus my mate's shorter 996mm.

So let's not split hairs, whilst my wheelbase is slightly longer by 18mm, thus flattening out technical downhills off-road in gravel mode (anything helps in the skills department!), it's not going to make a lot of difference on a smooth paved road with the gorgeous 32mm Vittoria Cross's the I favour these days for road riding.

With a stack height of 595mm in a Large and a reach of 392mm, we're getting dangerously close to the kind of geometry I ride normally on my road bike (Aethos size 58). So, what's left, where else can we look to try and find a damming problem for this project? Let's next look at handlebars as the feel is very important.

One thing that we don't want to get wrong, is the feel and comfort of the front end. Where our hands rest, the shape of the bars and our long-term endurance riding comfort is super-important.  Some people (hey Rich....) are obsessed with handlebar shape and feel. So much so, they will not compromise on their favoured set-up. Rich likes a ***** BAR & a ****** STEM!!! Keep them separate! Don't integrate them. Whereas, I love a nice one-piece bar. Oh yeah.....

When I got my first OPEN WI:DE, I experimented with bars a lot. I tried a one-piece PRO Vide bar and whilst it looked cool, it was not comfortable. After a while, I accepted defeat and switched back to a carbon stem and carbon separate bar. The different was incredible. Comfort was immediately restored. But, when I think back to that experiment now, 5 years later, it strikes me that those PRO Vibe's were a very stiff road-specific performance product.  It hadn't really crossed my mind then that one-piece bars with more flex and comfort built-in, could be a thing. Gravel riding just hadn't exploded yet at that time so the integrated 'FAST-GRAVEL' concepts hadn't arrived yet.

Has FAST-GRAVEL & Market-Ready Gravel Arrived Now?

Yes is the short answer. I believe it has. We now have a high volume of industry leading brands providing integrated or 'aero' gravel oriented bikes. These are more 'race-ready' off-road capable bikes with a focus on performance and speed, like the new OPEN or Wilier's RAVE SLR and many more.  This differs from what we were seeing even just 2 years ago. Primarily from the emergence of gravel bikes as a new trending market some 5-7 years ago, bikes were deemed more 'adventure' oriented. The geometry (a word I hate by the way.... it's just nerdy and jargon-esq!) of these bikes in most cases, was based on a more relaxed and upright position. An expectation that people would largely be using these new 'gravel bikes' as a form of exploration.  

shouldn't be limited to that.   After all, when I think about gravel riding, I think back to this incredible experience in Iceland. But, I also think about some of the 'Adventure X' gravel sportive's we went to participate in across various parts of the UK. The Adventure X series consisted of about 6-8 sportives in glorious settings from the Lake District and the Peak District to the Surrey Hills and more. It was racing but with a heavy focus on fun. 

Notice anything about the image gallery?? Yes, the eagle-eyed will spot that Jemima is riding the same bike as me. Except is wasn't the 'same' bike, it was my 'ACTUAL BIKE'!! 

There in lies a story. Think back to the earlier part of this article where we covered gear ratio's and the need to really understand your terrain.  Well, let's just say one of us did their research and the other didn't. As such, a bike swap was required half way to the South of Iceland when it got tough and old muggins here had to ride the bike with inadequate gearing for the horrifically steep ascents through the Highlands...

Conclusions

So where does all of this leave me with my one-bike-for-all project. Ok let's be clear, I'm talking about a bike that is versatile enough to make me want to ride it all of the time. I'm going to list my requirements as a basis for my conclusions:

- This bike needs to be suitably aero that it can feel and actually be fast on the road
- I need it to have gears both low and high enough to cope with long mountain climbs, fast flat roads & steep gravel climbs
- I don't want big jumps in the cassette at the high-end
- It needs to be less than 7.5kg
- It needs to be suitably painted so as to not worry about stone chippings etc
- I want it to be integrated but with a nice feeling handlebar i.e. short reach and shallow drop
- Clearance for up to 48mm 700C tyres for gravel
- Option for a front derailleur

So this is a fairly long wish-list but I think with the OPEN UPPER CONCEPT for example, this is pretty much achievable give or take a few mm's on the tyre clearance.

I'm not there yet but I think I'm closer to feeling confident it's a genuinely viable project. What makes it so, is SRAM's XPLR gravel set-up.  That may well be the only option. Shimano just doesn't offer the flexibility, as their only true gravel-focused set-up is GRX. Whilst I do love GRX, it's a bit on the 'hefty' side weight wise for a top spec road bike setup. Which ultimately, is half of my project.

I hope you made it to the end of this! More to follow....

Tone