Not necessarily a commuter because I'm now retired, but we did do nearly 40 gravel miles in the forest yesterday & 13 miles of flow-y single track cross country with a few 2-3 foot drop offs, a couple or 3-4 foot drops (with suitable transitions) & bunches miscellaneous tiny jumps, earlier in the week.



I found that my "gravel bike" with Gravelking 700x38's just wasn't up to the gravel riding I was doing. A broken fork & disintigrating tire casings seemed to indicate as much. So, I sought out to outfit a more capable bike. I have not had luck with Panaracers of any variety, so make of that what you will.

I usually run the RockShox Recon with the lockout open & accounted for the suspension sag when setting the bar height. I do hit the lockout if I intend to stand on the pedals at all as the bike does tend to absorb a lot of effort when standing.

To get a similar fit to my road bikes, I started with a zero-offset seatpost, found road handlebars whose width was the same as the OEM straightbar grips measured center-to-center, 42cm. After that is was a matter of finding a stem that was the right combination of rise/run to put the hoods in the right place when actively riding & buying Gevenalle shifters with short pull for canti/road brakes & Dynasys/mountain 11 speed shifting. Around $250 for the drop bar conversion all told...mostly on shifters.

I don't do centuries on it but that is more on account of the supremely knobby 559x 52 tire choice & the riding (or absence thereof) I have been doing lately than anything else. I don't see any reason why not, though. The fit is comparable to my century bikes & it's only been configured as such for the last few months. I weigh 190 pounds & usually set the fork air pressure at 130psi for road/gravel use. On Gravel I find I use around 80mm of suspension travel & when mountain biking I bottom out regularly.

You may take notice of the Schlumpf Speed-drive. Mated to the 11-46 cassette the combination yields 700% range.

In the picture is also an Adventure Hydration 1 gallon/4 liter water tank. It performs exactly as you would expect.

I think the biggest drawback about using a suspension fork on a commuter would be the maintenance requirement to replace worn seals just from the shear number of accumulated hours & the constant friction wear in a very narrow range on the stanchions. Any full-on suspension fork in commuter duty would not be a lifetime purchase. In this regard, I think Lauf might be on the right track. High frequency damping, short travel, no real moving parts subject to wear by friction, little to no & or very simple maintenance.

The capabilities of an honest to goodness mountain biking suspension fork in commuter duty are probably so much more than is necessary, it would only add trouble & complication where none is necessary.