Blurred Lines Or Just Bicycles?

Once upon a time most road bikes had 32mm tires.

As I wrote yesterday at the end of the "FN&V" post, today I wanted to look at just what is going on at the brand level with gravel bikes, so-called "endurance road" bikes, and the influence of mountain bikes on gravel bikes. 

Things that once seemed unimaginable even just 10 years ago are now commonplace and things that seem like they are really "gravel" or MTB are called something entirely different by the industry. 

Tires kind of define the genre' and so it has been for many decades, but what was once a "road bike" tire fell out of favor only to resurface as a "road bike tire" that many see as being "gravel lite". 

Let me explain....

 If we go back 30 plus years ago, and when we think about the original "bike boom" which was fomented by the "Gas Crisis" of the 1970's, we can see something that resembles "endurance road" bikes from today. Especially if we are mainly defining that by tire size, which the media and brands seem to be doing. 

How is that the 1970's road bikes are congruent to today's technological marvels? Again, if we focus on tire size, most road bikes of the 1970's were using 27" X 1 1/4" size wheels. There were some 1 3/8ths tires, and a few 1" wide tires thrown in for good measure, but the vast majority of road bikes people were buying up by the thousands in the 70's were 27" X 1 1/4" wheel sized bikes. 

That's ISO 630 X 32mm for you metric folks. 

Trek Domane bikes come standard with 700 X 32mm tires.

They say "What comes around goes around", and while the 27"/ISO630 diameter tires have been left behind, the width, 1 1/4"/32mm, has resurfaced as the standard road bike sized tire. 

So, stretching that a few millimeters to, say 35mm, is that getting into "gravel" territory? Well, recall that 27" X 1 3/8ths was a fairly common size back in the 70's. That's essentially 35mm. So, while this all may seem like road bikes have gone mad with these wider tires, it really is a return to what once was commonplace.

So if we take into account a few things here, this really all makes sense. The return to wider widths on road bikes isn't "new", its just using what made sense for "all-road riding" for decades previous to the shrinking of tire widths which began in the 1980's. People forget. So, history is there to remind us that perhaps the cycling designers, marketers, and brands went astray for a few decades and are now "returning to their senses", as it were. 

You may see it as "they are just making up this stuff to sell new product!", and perhaps there is a little something to all of that. But there is also a historical precedent for 32mm-35mm tires as being "common" road bike tire widths. It certainly may have been spurred on by the gravel bike scene, but that does not erase the reasons these widths make sense, and have, for decades prior to now. 

The Salsa Cycles Fargo, November 2008. A bike way ahead of its time.

Now what of this MTB-like gravel bike stuff? That's really a "new" innovation, right? 

No, not really. 

Going back to the 2000's, it was a dream of many riders who were early adopters of 29"ers to have a flared drop-bar specific "adventure" bike. This having been an influence of earlier MTB folks from the late 1980's who used flared drop bars on 26" mountain bikes. 

That drop bar idea was paired with the then common 2.1" X 700c sized tire. Using these ideas, the "dream bike" would have lighter-duty frames than a full-on MTB matched up with modernized flared drop bars. This rig was thought up as the perfect bike to just hit up some easier single track, gravel, and to be able to hold its own on pavement when necessary. 

You could call this idea "gravel-plus", "drop bar MTB", or what Salsa Cycles called it, "an adventure by bike" bicycle. Credit Jason Boucher, then head of the brand, for spearheading this idea back in the late 2000's, an idea that was nearly shot down, by the way. I'm very happy it made it through the gauntlet of QBP's process, and that the Fargo, at least the Gen I version, was the bicycle that launched the legitimacy of more mountain bike-ish gravel bikes, bikepacking, and the drop bars on MTB bikes revival. 

Say what you will, but the fact is that the Fargo was a decade plus ahead of its time in terms of its affects on gravel bikes, and now 50mm + wide tires with drop bars and MTB geometry features is not such a crazy idea as it was in late 2008. 

But where does THAT fit in the gravel bike continuum? Well, a better question would be, "What is a "gravel bike" anyway?" For that matter, does "endurance road" have to be seen as encroaching on gravel bikes capabilities? Who says what is "gravel" and what is "not gravel" anyway? 

The bike industry. Bicycle mainstream media. That's who. 

If you feel comfortable using any bike on gravel, then it is a "gravel bike".

Marketing an idea is what makes money, and the public loves "categories", or the brands would not pursue those divisions and sub-sets for bicycles. People that don't know any better and want an easy, turnkey solution to perceived problems won't care to know what reality is, and this post's information would not make a whit of difference to those sorts of consumers. That said, there is history to look at, and the clarity for what may seem like random choices to pilfer innocent folks out of their money exists which actually makes sense.

Finally, these are all choices and we live in a "golden age" of bicycle choices for sure. At the end of the day, it all comes down to "just riding". Whatever the marketers or media calls 'em, they are just bicycles. 

I hope you get a good ride in soon and thanks for reading!