The great cycling industry scam: road bikes?

I’m in my tinkering era.

If you told me three years ago I would be writing many detailed professional tech stories on the wonders of bike parts I would have said you’re out of your mind. But things change. In particular, I find the tech element of gravel cycling a huge draw for my interest in the sport and one of the aspects that I hope gravel can continue to lean into in an organic, non-sponsor-bomb type of way. Let’s continue to be weird and dictate what the industry should do rather than have the industry dictate to us what is best.

I think a great example of why this is so important can be found in the oldest criticism of gravel: it’s just a sport so the industry can sell more bikes.

While some people in the industry have benefited from the new avenue of bike sales, I think people have it twisted around. People always wanted to ride rad adventurous stuff, it was just hard to feel bold enough to do it on tools that we were convinced we needed to be faster than we were. In reality, fast could also be capable, but not in the design confines of the genre known as road bikes. So a new genre had to be created.

Now, with this new understanding and appreciation for bikes that can do more, I think the inverse of that old criticism is more accurate: road bikes only exist so the industry can sell more bikes. Let me elaborate.

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When I came into cycling in the late ’00s, there were three cycling disciplines and, in turn, three general types of bikes: road, cyclocross, and mountain biking. Triathlon bikes existed, but these were tools of suffering, and a type of suffering that I, frankly never had any interest in. There were also track bikes, and BMX bikes, and many types of mountain bikes, and old road bikes that already seemed like different types of bikes – but really there was three and one type kinda just sucked to ride.

I am talking about cyclocross bikes, of course. But that’s a story for another time.

This was a problem for me, a kid who loved to roam and who had access to many many miles of gravel roads around Charlottesville, Virginia which connected tarmac, to the mountains, to trails, and so on and so forth. I made the most of my mountain bike (that wasn’t much of a mountain bike) but mostly I was a road cyclist since my road bike was the best I had kicking around.

For the next decade, I went deep down into that road bike rabbit hole. It was a good rabbit hole, I have many great memories from those years and I gained a bunch of road cycling skills, but now I look back at that period with a tad of regret thinking about all the dirt I could’ve ridder and other skills I could’ve gained.

Lord knows I wasn’t going to do that on some arbitrarily narrow tubular tires. I had one good bike and so I rode that one bike a lot.

Yet I know I would be better off if I got a gravel bike at the jump and did all this youthful tinkering when I was a kid. All the road opportunities would still be there, but so too would be so much more. Intuitively, I think I have known this for a long time, but recently a purchase I made has me questioning all the places I could’ve already gone if the industry was ten years ahead.

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This summer I finally had the cash to buy my first new bike. Yes, I know that is a bit mad coming from someone who has been at it for as long as I have, but life has its perks (sometimes) when you go deep down the roadie rabbit hole. Nevertheless, it was time to get something very new: a proper mountain bike.

I spent a long time looking and delving into tech choices I could/needed to make. Ultimately, I settled on something that I dug and that would be something I would hopefully dig for a while. I prioritized a stiff, responsive pedaling platform to satisfy my roadie tendencies when it comes to geometry. I also wanted something long to accommodate a more natural, to me, extended position. Lastly, I was committed to going on the bigger end of cross-country travel with 120mm all the rage. Going less seemed like I might be looking longingly at new builds if I went for a measly 100mm bike.

Eventually, I settled on the BMC Fourstroke LT. Along with all the aforementioned aspects, the Fourstroke spoke to my deeply embedded love for bikes that look like a dang bike – with straight lines, and nice triangles. It is a nice frame that was worth buying, even if it took all the money away from investing in any amount of quality in terms of parts. Those parts, including a $160 wheelset (YIKES), I cannot vouch for, but dang, the bike is still a lot of fun. Is it better than other mountain bikes? I couldn’t tell you. Is it better than not having a mountain bike? Undoubtedly.

It’s so fun, in fact, it has me wondering why it took me so long. I think the answer goes back to the fact I never had a gravel bike to dip my toe on the wild side. I wouldn’t love the mountain bike the way I do if I hadn’t first ventured onto dirt roads, before I found the chunkier terrain, and ventured onto the trails with my Traildonkey. That progression brought me from being a road cyclist with a bad mountain bike who was baffled by the whole process of trail riding, to a rider who now knows the dark arts of traction control, counter-balance, and high torque maneuvers that make mountain biking a fun rather than tedious.

It was something I needed to find on my own with a slow wade into the deep end through the capability of a good gravel bike. That journey is much harder to make when one starts with a road bike. Now, I feel like I am getting a much broader, truer love for the sport. I just really wish I got that perspective sooner which is why I am a bit envious of the kids today and the amazing machines available to them.

Ultimately, I love road bikes and don’t believe that they are an industry scam. But anyone who positions gravel cycling or gravel racing as something the industry has artificially lifted has got to re-examine that chip on their shoulder. Road bikes are fast, and that’s cool, but undoubtedly we are better off now that we all have space to tinker and figure out the stuff that grinds our gears rather than being told what gears we want to grind.

For your eyes and ears

• I did a long-term review of an FSA road one-piece cockpit on a gravel bike and I really enjoyed it. However, it is a pretty specific choice that requires a good deal of thought before you make the switch. The full story is on Cycling Weekly.

• SBT GRVL has survived to fight another year! The race has a new date, a new format, and should have a lot more attention as it will now be the big event on the global calendar a week before the Tour de France starts. Yet how it got to that decision was quite the saga. Let’s hope it sticks!

• Il Lombardy is this weekend and Pogačar should win it. As always, it has me thinking how much of a bummer the end of the season is and how much I wish it could be reconfigured. In turn, there really isn’t much to talk about other than UAE’s season win record chase. So naturally, the media landscape has moved back to one of its favorite things: GOAT talk.

• The LifeTime Grand Prix is back for 2025, which is great news because I refuse to expect things to simply carry on in this day and age of cycling. It has been tweaked slightly, with only six stops (good!) but the breakdown is now much more mountain bike heavy (ok) is missing the East Coast (bad) and the season has no flow to its structure (ugh). Obviously, races have to slot in where they can and LifeTime should consolidate around its strong points (i.e. Sea Otter, Unbound, Leadville, and maybe Big Sugar) but as it stands the LTGP continues to feel fragmented and unwieldy. Take out Chequamegon, add an East Coast gravel race in early July, and boom, the narrative feels much more complete. (Don’t you dare tell me there isn’t the terrain and towns wanting it either!)

A side of something else

I have a few Substacks I love. One is the House of Strauss. Ethan is the right mix of astute and aloof which makes me love him, hate him, but most of all listen to him. In a recent piece, he linked an article from a few years ago that was a long conversation about a joke at the end of the movie Annie Hall. I won't explain it here (the article does a much better job of it) but it has something to do with eggs, chickens, love, and the inherent complexity of romantic relationships. I don’t think have been so wrapped up in a written piece of storytelling in a long time. Even if you have never seen Annie Hall, which is excusable given Woody Allen’s current cultural status, you can get a lot from examining its last joke.