velotel
07-25-2018, 03:06 AM
Not terribly fond of the term but it’s acceptable. What I like about it is the emphasis it places on road, unlike gravel bike.
Anyway, Weisan started a post about not being a groader that kept surfacing for the longest time. Thought maybe we need a post showing the opposite side of that coin. Thus the title.
I love road bikes, I adore the position, especially in the drops, I love the bike’s lightness, its quickness, and yea definitely its speed, the ease with which it accelerates, even with this old guy on the saddle. Road bikes are, in a word, friggin awesome! I know, two words, couldn’t help myself.
But, as great as road bikes are, fat-tired road bikes are way better. For so many reasons.
Like the obvious, riding where there aren’t cars, or at least not many and not moving fast. Here in France I don’t have a problem with drivers. The vast majority take care around cyclists and the few who take less care aren’t even close to the aggro, even insane behavior I keep reading about in the states. I still prefer riding without cars; the french use their phones while driving as much as anyone else. But beyond that I just enjoy the peace and quiet on roads without cars.
I also like comfort (to a point obviously or I wouldn’t ride a bike). Beating myself up in the search for fun seems rather counterproductive. Fat, low-pressure tires soak up the irregularities, the cracks and holes, the debris that invariably washes up onto road surfaces without costing me any performance on the road. They also grip like crazy in turns at high speed. A total win, more comfort, at minimum equal performance.
Security, there’s way more with fat tires. Like on my ride the other evening, revisiting an old friend, the Col de l’Arpettaz. Beautiful place with these two mostly one-laner roads crawling up the mountain. The one I rode the other evening is the steep puppy, with lots of double-digit ramps along the way where my StonerBike’s low gearing was much appreciated. Even better were the fat, soft tires. The road’s paved but we’re talking rustic asphalt, all crinkled, cracked, lumpy, and patched, a road that’s never heard the word buffed. Going up, at least at my speed, all that is of no account but going down, fast, another story. The bike’s hopping around, tires skittering on gravel and sand washed off the hillside by rains and you’re smashing across all kinds of fat cracks in the asphalt. The worst are the cracks running longitudinally down the pavement that are wide enough to swallow skinny tires. With my fat tires I barely give ‘em a glance.
Those are the roads I search out, secondary roads, at best, sometimes not far off primitive. The kinds of roads drivers avoid unless there’s no choice. And mountain bikers totally ignore because there’s no challenge. Those are the roads fat-tired road bikes own.
Then there’s the dirt, or rather mixes of dirt, gravel, embedded rock, and even grass, some smooth as pavement, others rough as the proverbial cob. This is where fat-tired road bikes come into their own, sometimes at crazy fast speeds. Like up in the Bourg d’Oisans valley. Every time I’m up there I see all these riders hugging the shoulders on the road between Bourg d’Oisans and the turn for the Col de la Croix de Fer with cars hammering by at 80-90 kph. I’ve done that, wasn’t much fun. Years ago I discovered this dirt/gravel road along the bank of the Romanche River that’s a gas to ride, even with 23-25mm tires. With fatter tires it’s a friggin race track where you can fly damn near as fast as any cyclists out there hugging the shoulders of the highway, only it’s totally peaceful. The only sounds the birds singing and the popping from stones shooting out from under your tires. A joy of a ride.
Then there’s the challenge factor, the need for technical skills. Riding a road bike on the road requires no technical skills. Learn to balance on a bike, steer it in the direction you want to go, and stop it when you want, that’s it, all the technical skills you need for the road.
Climbing? Nope, balance and steering, nothing more. If you can’t ride up a hill, it’s not for lack of technical skills, it’s because your gearing isn’t appropriate for your strength and the hill’s grade. And going down, if you can’t handle a turn it’s because your speed is too fast for the arc. Slow down and it’s a piece of cake. In other words with a road bike there is never the question ‘can I ride this’. In the dirt, on jeep tracks, double-tracks, single-tracks the question is never far away. And it’s not a question of gearing or strength, it’s about do you have the skills to maneuver and drive the bike through the obstacles.
Technical double and single-tracks is where my StonerBike totally redlines the fun meter. Takes me back to the old days when mountain biking was just getting started and almost every ride was an adventure. I love having to pick a line and follow it, the eyes constantly scanning ahead and simultaneously right in front of the tire, practically painting a line on the trail. Then I lose the line and it’s wing it time with little more than fierce determination and frantic maneuvering driving the bike forward. I adore those moments, losing myself in the action, pure focus on what’s happening right there in front of my bike, following my eyes through some mini-chaos of rocks, roots, whatever, constantly shifting weight, balancing the power in the strokes between moving forward and not losing traction.
Things like that don’t happen on a road bike, or maybe they do in criterium racing or in the midst of a pack sprinting for the line, situations I’ve never encountered and never will, and probably when weaving at speed through traffic, something else I don’t do. But otherwise riding a road bike on the road is all about the power on the pedals.
Power isn’t what riding on a gnarly single or double-track is all about. I mean obviously you need the power to keep the bike moving forward but in technical moves it’s about nuanced power, applying just enough to keep moving but not enough to lose traction or accelerate too fast into the next obstacle.
And even better, every ride is different. I’ve got these trails I ride maybe on average three times a week and every single passage is a whole new game. One day I’m in the groove, sliding through smooth as a cat, the moves dialed and flowing and I come off the trail thinking man that was easy! And then damn the next time I’m riding like a drunk staggering through a pinball machine, nothing but linked recoveries. Crazy how it can change from one day to the next, or rather how my riding can change. But when it’s good, the world slips into this magical choreography of the body dancing with the trail’s rhythm, the bike a tuned instrument seamlessly linking the two, the moves fluid, my head bursting with joy.
Now the crazy bit about this. I can come off that trail right onto a paved road and instantly the bike’s a pure road bike carving high-speed turns in some eyeball warping gravity plunge like it was born for that, which it was. A seamless transition from a dancing trail dervish to a scalpel carving down a paved descent. That capability was one of the biggies I wanted when Kent and I were talking about the design for my bike. I told him absolutely I didn’t want the bike’s performance on asphalt, and especially in high-speed descents, compromised. Any compromises, if needed, I wanted taken from the bike’s trail abilities. What I wanted was a road bike that could jam in the dirt. That’s what I got.
I have the remarkable good fortune to have within a short spin of my house a couple of excellent single-tracks to play on. For reasons that still seem to elude me my time to ride always seems way too constricted and frequently translates into a long hour, maybe an hour and a half of riding in the evening. Which isn’t a problem because of those trails. I head out on the paved road then onto the trails, tempo hard (which for me doesn’t necessarily translate into speed, just effort). Working the bike over those trails is intense, physically and mentally, and by the time I get back to the house my circuit breakers are snapping and popping and smoking from the heat of a massive adrenalin high. I love it. There’s no way I can tap that same high just riding the asphalt.
Thus, I am a total groader.
Anyway, Weisan started a post about not being a groader that kept surfacing for the longest time. Thought maybe we need a post showing the opposite side of that coin. Thus the title.
I love road bikes, I adore the position, especially in the drops, I love the bike’s lightness, its quickness, and yea definitely its speed, the ease with which it accelerates, even with this old guy on the saddle. Road bikes are, in a word, friggin awesome! I know, two words, couldn’t help myself.
But, as great as road bikes are, fat-tired road bikes are way better. For so many reasons.
Like the obvious, riding where there aren’t cars, or at least not many and not moving fast. Here in France I don’t have a problem with drivers. The vast majority take care around cyclists and the few who take less care aren’t even close to the aggro, even insane behavior I keep reading about in the states. I still prefer riding without cars; the french use their phones while driving as much as anyone else. But beyond that I just enjoy the peace and quiet on roads without cars.
I also like comfort (to a point obviously or I wouldn’t ride a bike). Beating myself up in the search for fun seems rather counterproductive. Fat, low-pressure tires soak up the irregularities, the cracks and holes, the debris that invariably washes up onto road surfaces without costing me any performance on the road. They also grip like crazy in turns at high speed. A total win, more comfort, at minimum equal performance.
Security, there’s way more with fat tires. Like on my ride the other evening, revisiting an old friend, the Col de l’Arpettaz. Beautiful place with these two mostly one-laner roads crawling up the mountain. The one I rode the other evening is the steep puppy, with lots of double-digit ramps along the way where my StonerBike’s low gearing was much appreciated. Even better were the fat, soft tires. The road’s paved but we’re talking rustic asphalt, all crinkled, cracked, lumpy, and patched, a road that’s never heard the word buffed. Going up, at least at my speed, all that is of no account but going down, fast, another story. The bike’s hopping around, tires skittering on gravel and sand washed off the hillside by rains and you’re smashing across all kinds of fat cracks in the asphalt. The worst are the cracks running longitudinally down the pavement that are wide enough to swallow skinny tires. With my fat tires I barely give ‘em a glance.
Those are the roads I search out, secondary roads, at best, sometimes not far off primitive. The kinds of roads drivers avoid unless there’s no choice. And mountain bikers totally ignore because there’s no challenge. Those are the roads fat-tired road bikes own.
Then there’s the dirt, or rather mixes of dirt, gravel, embedded rock, and even grass, some smooth as pavement, others rough as the proverbial cob. This is where fat-tired road bikes come into their own, sometimes at crazy fast speeds. Like up in the Bourg d’Oisans valley. Every time I’m up there I see all these riders hugging the shoulders on the road between Bourg d’Oisans and the turn for the Col de la Croix de Fer with cars hammering by at 80-90 kph. I’ve done that, wasn’t much fun. Years ago I discovered this dirt/gravel road along the bank of the Romanche River that’s a gas to ride, even with 23-25mm tires. With fatter tires it’s a friggin race track where you can fly damn near as fast as any cyclists out there hugging the shoulders of the highway, only it’s totally peaceful. The only sounds the birds singing and the popping from stones shooting out from under your tires. A joy of a ride.
Then there’s the challenge factor, the need for technical skills. Riding a road bike on the road requires no technical skills. Learn to balance on a bike, steer it in the direction you want to go, and stop it when you want, that’s it, all the technical skills you need for the road.
Climbing? Nope, balance and steering, nothing more. If you can’t ride up a hill, it’s not for lack of technical skills, it’s because your gearing isn’t appropriate for your strength and the hill’s grade. And going down, if you can’t handle a turn it’s because your speed is too fast for the arc. Slow down and it’s a piece of cake. In other words with a road bike there is never the question ‘can I ride this’. In the dirt, on jeep tracks, double-tracks, single-tracks the question is never far away. And it’s not a question of gearing or strength, it’s about do you have the skills to maneuver and drive the bike through the obstacles.
Technical double and single-tracks is where my StonerBike totally redlines the fun meter. Takes me back to the old days when mountain biking was just getting started and almost every ride was an adventure. I love having to pick a line and follow it, the eyes constantly scanning ahead and simultaneously right in front of the tire, practically painting a line on the trail. Then I lose the line and it’s wing it time with little more than fierce determination and frantic maneuvering driving the bike forward. I adore those moments, losing myself in the action, pure focus on what’s happening right there in front of my bike, following my eyes through some mini-chaos of rocks, roots, whatever, constantly shifting weight, balancing the power in the strokes between moving forward and not losing traction.
Things like that don’t happen on a road bike, or maybe they do in criterium racing or in the midst of a pack sprinting for the line, situations I’ve never encountered and never will, and probably when weaving at speed through traffic, something else I don’t do. But otherwise riding a road bike on the road is all about the power on the pedals.
Power isn’t what riding on a gnarly single or double-track is all about. I mean obviously you need the power to keep the bike moving forward but in technical moves it’s about nuanced power, applying just enough to keep moving but not enough to lose traction or accelerate too fast into the next obstacle.
And even better, every ride is different. I’ve got these trails I ride maybe on average three times a week and every single passage is a whole new game. One day I’m in the groove, sliding through smooth as a cat, the moves dialed and flowing and I come off the trail thinking man that was easy! And then damn the next time I’m riding like a drunk staggering through a pinball machine, nothing but linked recoveries. Crazy how it can change from one day to the next, or rather how my riding can change. But when it’s good, the world slips into this magical choreography of the body dancing with the trail’s rhythm, the bike a tuned instrument seamlessly linking the two, the moves fluid, my head bursting with joy.
Now the crazy bit about this. I can come off that trail right onto a paved road and instantly the bike’s a pure road bike carving high-speed turns in some eyeball warping gravity plunge like it was born for that, which it was. A seamless transition from a dancing trail dervish to a scalpel carving down a paved descent. That capability was one of the biggies I wanted when Kent and I were talking about the design for my bike. I told him absolutely I didn’t want the bike’s performance on asphalt, and especially in high-speed descents, compromised. Any compromises, if needed, I wanted taken from the bike’s trail abilities. What I wanted was a road bike that could jam in the dirt. That’s what I got.
I have the remarkable good fortune to have within a short spin of my house a couple of excellent single-tracks to play on. For reasons that still seem to elude me my time to ride always seems way too constricted and frequently translates into a long hour, maybe an hour and a half of riding in the evening. Which isn’t a problem because of those trails. I head out on the paved road then onto the trails, tempo hard (which for me doesn’t necessarily translate into speed, just effort). Working the bike over those trails is intense, physically and mentally, and by the time I get back to the house my circuit breakers are snapping and popping and smoking from the heat of a massive adrenalin high. I love it. There’s no way I can tap that same high just riding the asphalt.
Thus, I am a total groader.