simonaway427

Going for a road ride on your CX bike has its advantages though. THere have been a couple of occasions where I mapped out a ride on google first, only to come to the dreaded "Pavement Ends Here" sign and it turns to gravel. Had to turn back while riding the 23c's. On a cross bike, no issue - keep going.

fogrider

yeah, if the terrain was flat, you can ride almost anything. I have a great cx bike and ride it short rides (commute, sunday recovery ride, after work training rides, etc.). here's the thing, the cx bike is about 21 pounds...my road bike, a little more than 16. since I live in san francisco, I'm good with riding 21 pounds of bike for about 3,000 feet of climbing, but I'm not giving up by roadie for rides over 40 miles.

djb

another happy camper with a Spec tricross sport with 28s on it, allows me to carry panniers, has slow steering compared to a roadbike, but thats ok for me, is stable at speed downhills in corners,

for me a nice compromise of sport tourer that is a good commuter yet tough for the crap roads I have to deal with in Montreal, plus bonus of "touring geometry" for bags, gearing for the terrain I ride on, and can slap on wider tires if an only gravel road, trail ride comes up.

umd

Fwiw, I did this on my cross bike.
https://connect.garmin.com/activity/23054739

brianbeech

Wow - that is a really good picture of how efficient a CX bike can be for a roadie (as a dual purpose bike). Thanks for that! Did you have road tires on for that or your normal CX tires?

umd

Road tires

dnuzzomueller

Im another person here who does not actually own a true road bike and I use a cross bike to do all my road riding. A few tweaks like changing the gearing and obviously throwing on some road tires makes it pretty damn good on the road. I have no issues keeping up with all my friends at college who have dedicated road bikes.

My experience with the cantilever brakes is that they are actually amazingly strong once set-up. Problem is that they are very time consuming to set-up correctly and they can quite easily get pulled out of alignment by braking. The trick is having a good pair of brakes on the bike and having a good pair of brake pads. I personally found that after ditching my Avid Short 4's it became really easy to just lock up my wheel if I wasn't careful.

Also the handling isn't all that slow, one thing I will say though is that my bike is REALLY small (48cm frame and I am a 56cm, and I don't recommend that) and it is a Redline so the wheel base is on the very short side and thus it gives me quicker handling. Although the top tube is so short I get horrible back cramps.

Although UMD is correct in that wheelbases on the cross bikes are larger and the brakes can be a total PITA. Just takes some patience that is all and I am a bit of a tinkerer so the set-up for the brakes doesn't bother me.

Road Rash

I've got a Specialized Tricross setup for road use. I use it for long rides up to 400miles with 25 or 28mm road tires. Benefits are the higher fork and large headtube allow me to get the handlebars up close to my saddle height. The longer wheelbase is good for comfort and stability on long rides (though I prefer a shorter wheelbase for climbing and descending) There is minimal additional weight. Also as stated before the bottom bracket drop of newer CX bikes is about the same as road bikes.

Biggest challenge with brakes is eliminating the front brake squeal.

knucklesandwich

I rode cross bikes on the road for 4 years before I got a road bike (CAAD9, natch), and I was fine. However, having ridden a road bike now, I would not want to go back to a cx bike for all my weekend road rides.

telebianchi

These are the biggest differences I found. My only non-full-suspension bike for 5 1/2 years was a Fuji Cross. Use primarily on road with 700x23 tires. Got a dedicated road bike in 2008. The only immediate differences I found were that I could go faster down hills because (1) the bike was more stable at speed and (2) I trusted the road bike to stop quicker. After a couple months of riding both, I came to really prefer the position of the road bike on longer rides, but I could probably set up the CX bike similarly with just a different stem and seat adjustment.

If you can only have one bike, go with the CX and an extra set of wheels for road tires.

umd

Here is a club ride I did with CX knobby tires.
https://connect.garmin.com/activity/53078742

Magnificent777

Bacciagalupe

So just out of curiosity.... Is there a way to use the power meter to get a rough idea if you are, in fact, losing any efficiency based on the bike you're using?

And is your cross bike set up with the same position as your road bike(s)?

guadzilla

I just finished a tour of Bhutan on a cross bike (Ritchey Breakaway) - did some days with Panaracer Pasela 700x32s, and other days with Ritchie Cross 700x35s (including a day with 2500m of climbing). This was the ideal bike for the tour - a road bike with skinny tires would have sucked on some segments of the road (eg, where you ride over fresh landslides and post-monsoon potholes).

In fact, I am actually selling off one of my road bikes and replacing it with a carbon cross bike for this very reason.
V.

umd

Fairly similar position, can't get it quite as low so I bend my elbows a little more. It has a power meter also, and at the time I was getting roughly 10%-15% more power for the same speeds with my extremely unscientific testing. With CX tires mind you.

fogrider

do you really need to downsize the number of bikes you have? I have 3 road bikes, a cross bike and track bike. road tires on a cross bike really don't make sense to me, the handling is very different! those that make good road bikes will not be good cross bikes and good cx bikes will make pour road bikes. and not all road bikes are equal...I have 3 that ride different.

mustang1

Differences I found between rb (/w 23mm tires) & cx bike (/w 32mm road tires) are:\

1. rb is faster (due to tires and mtb gearing on mycx)
2. rb handles way better on the road (I love the twitchniess). Also cx not as good going round corners of cars when in traffic due to toe-overlap.
3. rb brakes are better
4. cx is way more comfortable (wider tires)
5. cx handles fenders so great after a rain storm
6. cx goes where rb cannot
7. cx cant go where mtb can

I use the rb whenever possible, even in the rain. But all my riding is only ever on the roads.

Edit: my

M_S

I use my cross bike for training on the road and dirt roads. I don;t do any road racing, just XC and cyclocross so it works for me. cantis are find as long as you have good ones with good pads and get them adjusted right. If I start road racing I'll think about a true road bike, for the geometry differences more than anything. Just riding around it's a pretty marginal difference between a cross bike with 23s and a road bike with same, though of course there are plenty of variables

Trucker Dan

I saw a guy win a cat 1 crit on a cx bike a few weeks ago. He was in a break that laped the field. Didn't look like it was holding him back too much.