Just as I was getting my head round hardtail 29ers as being possibly the best option for XC, I saw the On One Dirty Disco bundle including carbon wheels with discs and now I’m feeling all wibbly about it.

I’m guessing there’s a limit to what it’s reasonable to ride with drop bars and rigid forks but I’ve never tried it and in a perverse way I think it should at least be tried. Obviously large drops are out but what about steps upto say 18″ ?

I can appreciate the benefits of light weight, options to fit road tyres for a bit of the other.

At the same time there’s got to be limit beyond which sus forks are required – actually can they be fitted to a cx bike ? Maybe that’s the holy grail.

Your thoughts ?

They’re great to ride on the trail as a counterpoint to what you normally ride, once in a while, but it would have to be smooth going before the CX bike was truly preferable to a HT mountain bike IMHO.

That said you might surprise yourself as to what they are capable of – it’s just slow going over the rocks. Descents that are usually fun, fast and fearless on the MTB can get a bit slow and hesitant on the CX bike IME.
Trails where they absolutely govern are those meandering kitty litter affairs you get at trail centres.

I take out the cross bike for those occasions when my rigid mountain bike isn’t crap enough. It’s worse at everything apart from going up smooth easy hills, but it’s great fun while being bad at everything else. I did pretty much ruin the back wheel at innerleithen though.

It is not so much better or worse, it’s just very different.

When going further matters more than grinning over bumpy stuff.

Fire roads…is not a fan

I’ve taken the CX out with my mountain bike club for a night ride and can tell you that:

It’s faster up hills and on the flat.

It cuts through mud fantastically well and blasts off into the distance.

It’s a nightmare down anything steeper or rougher than a forestry road.

When you are racing CX.
When the trail allows or you’re good enough to cope with the battering.

Definitely at 0.5

When targeting smooth off road Strava segments and CX races

When retaining your own teeth, testicles and fingers has become a bore for you.

I’d quite happily just go out for a CX ride completely offroad, exactly the same route as I would on a mountain bike. Coincidentally, overall it’ll be faster but that’s irrelevant. It’s a different kind of riding and it’s just as much fun as a mountain bike.

When you start to ride canal towpaths.

Seriously though, it’s a good way to travel a bit further and link in all those little short sections of woodsy singletrack that you see from the car, but never a replacement for a MTB.

I can ride most things on my cross bike, but generally keep it for the smoother long distance rides. While it will cope with root twisty singletrack with the odd drop thrown in, I find those sorts of trails are much more fun on a proper mtb. If I am doing a ride with a bit of road distance and some bridleways then the cross bike is great, it makes the bridleways a bit more interesting, and the road bits fly by, rather than being a slog on the mtb.

I’m looking forward to riding Llandegla on my Cotic X. I reckon it’ll be a blast!

When you prefer walking to cycling.
CX is basically rambling carrying a big unwieldy object.

Of course it is… 🙄

but it’s great fun while being bad at everything else

That’s quite good actually. They’re brilliant fun and far more capable than they have any right to be. They’re not for big huckers who need to ride XTREME terrain to feel core.

You not seen proper mountain biking, on proper mountains then? (and I don’t mean man made trails like Morzine)

Real proper hike-a-bike stuff, and real rocks.

Funnily enough the only time I’ve ended up rambling with a bike was with an MTB. Those smaller peaks on the way over to Helvellyn (Lower Man? Raise?)

CX on bridleways etc. just to spice it up a bit, and make you guess whether the brakes will do anything on a muddy day.

I’ve been riding my CX bike a lot recently and it’s really fun up to the point where it gets very rocky, jumpy, or droppy. Fortunately, I live in the SE so there aren’t that many rocks and I can choose to avoid jumpy trails with doubles on them.

Certainly, somewhere like the new trails at Swinley Forest, the CX can be pretty quick. I haven’t ridden them on my mountain bike yet, but I’ve managed to sneak into the Strava top 10 on one or two singletrack sections there on the CX.

Sounds like you want to talk yourself into a new bike – CX bikes are fun… do it!

globalti – Member

It’s faster up hills and on the flat.

It cuts through mud fantastically well and blasts off into the distance.

If you stick skinny fast tyres on a light mtb, especially a rigid one, that gap pretty much goes away tbh.

Agree with most of the comments above. I’d say if your route includes more road/firetrail/bashtrack with just a few tasty downhill sections CX bike is fab.
If there’s a lot of rooty, rocky, hairy downhills you need an MTB to get the most fun out of it. Descending on a CX can be a case of braking all the way down, which isn’t too much fun.

There’s a guy on Weightweenies who made a MTB/CX/Monstrosity . Looks very very strange but then if he has placed well at big races like Trans Alps who are we to argue? When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense in terms of speed… it just depends what you want from a ride and where you ride. A rigid 29er (with a flat bar) could be very fast and a heck of a lot of fun 😀 You then have the option to add a suspension fork if it isn’t really for you- a CX may be a bit too specific and limited off-road

chucked some cash at that aint he

apart from the bars its just a rigid bike, so not really a mtb/cx/monstrosity

On a road bike, it was faster than an MTB 🙂

Depends a lot on what size tyres you can squeeze into it. My cross check has 45c tyres at the moment which I think is the equivalent of 1.7 or 1.8 in mtb speak.

That and how good you are at using your natural 12 inches front and rear suspension.

apart from the bars its just a rigid bike, so not really a mtb/cx/monstrosity

Looks like Di2 shifting too, and the bar end levers mean those will be the road version of BB7s. But, yeah, not really a monstrosity.

Most of my rides have a lot of road in them and the off-road segments aren’t particularly gnarly; I’m riding a rigid bike anyway. So, I’ve just bought a Cotic X and will be mainly riding that on solo rides. For riding off-road with a group, I’ll still be using my MTB.

DanW – Member

There’s a guy on Weightweenies who made a MTB/CX/Monstrosity

FTFY 😉 That’s more a mountain bike with funny bars than anything else.

apart from the bars its just a rigid bike, so not really a mtb/cx/monstrosity

At the end of the day a rigid 29er MTB and CX have a lot in common. Maybe a few geometry changes for the MTB to be better off road but these changes aren’t going to slow you down much on the road… which is kind of my point although I didn’t make it well. A 29er MTB is far more versatile than a CX bike. You can change the bars and tyres to suit your mood and terrain and have the option to add a suspension fork if you decide it is needed for your local off road trails. Also greater tyre clearance so a greater choice of tyres to suit.

The bars, brake lever, Di2, bar to saddle drop… it is a bit of a “different” as far as a traditional MTB goes- not bad though, I appreciate the different approach 🙂

Maybe we need to get the guy on WW to ride a loop on his adapted MTB and a CX bike to see if there are any real differences? 😀

I’m planning on taking my new weird cross thingy on a local night ride tomorrow – just for giggles (Really should be fine tuning the SS for SSUK, but it’s a NEW BIKE PEOPLE!)

I’ll report back once my eyes settle back in the sockets…

DrP

Thanks for the responses.

What I’m getting is, if I can afford the cx as a luxury then I’ll have a laugh on it, but if its one bike to rule them all versatility wise the 29er hard tail is the way to go.

Wow that was very close to an expensive “oh my god I must have that” moment. Sometimes he Internet is just plain scary. 😆

I reckon that at my local riding (singletrack mainly with some fireroad climbs), I’m about 5-10% slower on my CX bike than on an mtb over the same routes.

I’m a bit quicker on the fireroad climbs on my CX and slower everywhere else. It’s a very different experience though. On the mtb it’s pretty much a flat out blast. On the CX, it’s much more considered on the singletrack. Both are fun.

If I could only have one bike:

A 29er MTB frame, with the ability to run SS or geared; rigid forks or reasonably light suspension forks with a lockout; Mary bars.

With some swapping of tyres and flipping of stem/bars, that could be pretty close to a cx/road bike, while still being decent as a MTB.

To make it a bit more practical/faster to switch, you’d want two pairs of wheels with pre-mounted tyres, plus a choice of chainrings and cassettes. At that point, it’s probably cheaper to run two bikes: a cx and an MTB 🙂

When there’s more road/track/canal towpath than proper offroad.

Feedback time….
So, took the CX bike for a group blast last night – South Downs /Woods areas…
The ground was dry and hard- VERY hard! You really notice every trail bump with skinny tyres at 70PSI!
It’s not rocky here, but very rooty – It took a few tried to ‘figure out’ the weight balance whilst riding the drops. That is to say, you have to really put effort in to ‘deweight’ the front going over roots/ruts, but once you’ve figured it, that’s fine.

I did miss suspension/fat tyres when bombing along the singletrack – I got ‘pinged off’ at one point as I hit a stump coming around a corner at speed, and got bounced into the bushes!

However – I had a smile on my face the whole time, and was being ‘very noisy’ the whole ride (“whoa””Wow””eek” etc!), so all in all it was a cracking ride on a cracking bike!

Here’s the ride on strava…

DrP