Originally Posted by
merlinextraligh
Gravel racing is becoming a fairly big deal with races like Dirty Kanza.
You can do a gravel race on a MTB or a regular cross bike, but a "gravel racer" is beneficial for a couple of reasons. A MTB works, but is slow. A CX bike also works, but a true CX bike is designed for fairly narrow tires. (IIRC UCI regs only allow 32mm tires).
A gravel bike typically will take much wider tires, and typically has a longer wheel base, and more relaxed geometry which is more suited to a 12 hour race over rough roads.
I did DK on my CX bike, and it worked, but the tires I needed for the terrain barely fit, and I had some mud clearance issues.
If I lived where there were a lot of dirt roads, and Gravel races, I'd buy a gravel bike, before a CX bike.
The tire width limit for cross is CX, but there's a lot more clearance than that on most, because Mud Exists.
But see, there are a couple problems with this latest gravel bike fad. First, no one in the industry can actually agree on what makes a gravel bike. Some fit really wide tires, some less. Some have long wheelbases, some short. Some have fast geometry, some don't. You'd as easily find a cross bike with wide enough clearances. They're out there.
Second, and this is a related issue, "gravel road" covers an impossibly broad range of surfaces. Here in southern New England, dirt roads tend to have a relatively firm base of clay or silt and any surface sand or gravel tends to be pretty fine and not too deep. Yes, you get holes and ruts, but the surfaces tend to be fast and easily rideable on relatively narrow tires. The dirt roads I rode in the South tended to have gravel composed of much larger chunks and were generally much rougher. And then there's DK, which is a whole 'nother level of insanely bad conditions. The idea that there can even be a "gravel bike" that will be appropriate on a generic unsaved road is just nonsense.