New Cyclocross or Road Bike?

AllezAllezAllez

I've been thinking for a while of upgrading my Trek 1.2 for a new road bike, but I've always fancied the versatility of a Cyclocross bike. It must be the mountain biker in me, but I also fancy exploring rough country lanes when I'm on a road ride.

Most of my road riding miles is a steady pace with friends but sometimes with a club/charity rides. I do around 2000 miles a year.

Does anyone have any experience of running a cyclocross bike as their main bike and changing just changing the tyres or even buying a second set of wheels for dedicated road rides?

Would I need to specify a specific chainset which would be suitable for the road as well as off road?

Thoughts?

night_porter

It really depends on what type of cross bike you buy.

There are some "proper" cross bikes that are built for racing cross and they will be light for carrying with plenty of clearance for mud and low geared suitable for the terrain they are ridden on.

Then there are some "faux" cross bikes that are heavier use standard compact gearing have mudguard and rack eyes for road use and have more upright geometry than race bikes.

Think of the difference between the 2 as the difference between a Range Rover and a BMW M5, an off road 4x4 versus a soft road 4x4.

Monty Dog

I use my CX bikes regularly as road training bikes and do a fair bit of 'adventure' riding on the CX bike as well as actual racing. There are very few race-specific CX bikes around these days i.e. no bottle cages. For CX racing, a 46/36 chainset is often fitted - you don't need such a big chainring as 50 for CX races and a smaller size gap between the rings means the chain is less likely to fall-off on the downshift. Likewise, too low gears and it's quicker to dismount and run. If you genuinely want to do some offroad exploring, even a 34x28 low gear can be quite high IME, as it's quite tricky to maintain traction in loose or muddy conditions. I'm toying with the idea of a 46x30 double on my travel bike - 11-28 cassette should cope with steep trails. Gearing and tyre choice is more critical to whether the bike is good for offroad IME.

carrock

Got a specialized crux disc. Proper race rig. Love it. Have an s works roubaix as my road steed, so used to decent kit.

Changed the BB5 calipers to bb7 tho....