I have a Pinnacle cx bike and never use the drops. It runs a mix of cx style tyres so I can do a bit of exploring with road/trail as well as road tyres for 50 mile road only rides. New bike-itis is taking hold and given I never use the drops I was thinking that something like a Kinesis FF29 with rigid carbon forks may not be far off a road bike for my 50 mile jaunts, whilst being as much fun for exploring and also giving me a bike which is light for XC rides with another set of wheels (quite fancy swiss epic in 2016). I’m assuming something like Stans grail rims, a 38 front ring for 1x gears, or maybe even CX1 with a 40 tooth ring if it fits. The Pinnacle is currently set up with a 38 front and whilst I spin out at times it doesn’t really bother me so don’t need the road double up front.

So, the FF29, for arguments sake, will be built light and rigid. I can’t really see what I would lose from going that route over a CX bike for a very average road rider such as myself, especially if it was fitted with some jones loops for the more aero lay down position.

Anyone do anything similar? Concerned I might be left with a bike which is a bit rubbish to ride on the roads although as above I can’t fathom why.

you will have created a Hybrid, which aren’t ‘rubbish’ to ride the road on per se, but nowhere near a road bike

Difference between my road, my Charge Cooker on Ralphs and then my Meta AM29 on Ralphs is 3 mins over an hour.

With the Road bike being fastest, then the Charge being 2 mins slower… the Meta 1 mins slower than that.

i once put 35c slicks on my scandal for some reason.

They were appalling tyres which on my pompino were heavy but fast rolling seemed to suck the life out of the bike – i’m convinced it was faster on the road on mtb treads than slicks.

I think it might have been the upright position. Other people probably love it – but it wasn’t for me.

I’ve done a fair few miles on the road on a roadified mtb (when I only had one bike) and while it’s not a lot slower, I never much enjoyed the experience compared to a road bike type position – I think it’s the wider bars and slightly higher front end (though in theory you could obv sort that bit out).

I’ve seen you state this before and I find this really hard to believe. either you are really, really fast on your mtb, or really really slow on a road bike.

I tend to agree – I find my mtb significantly slower. On my commute, it’s around 42 mins by road bike, 43-4 mins on CX bike with road tyres, 46 mins on CX with CX tyres and 50+ on a fairly XC type mtb.

So based on Weeksy’s figures there’s probably not a lot of difference in pace given that ralphs will be a fair bit more draggy than 28c road tyres. Edit I’m ignoring the meta figure as that cannot be right….although it does beg the question why i’m relying on your other figures 😳

I know the feeling you’re talking about Nemesis but just put it down to the mtb I was on at the time being heavy (On one 456 with the old super heavy pikes!).

funnily enough I’ve just fitted a flat bar to my mates Pinnacle CXer.

My rigid 29er is lighter but it’s not the right position for 50 mile road rides.

Design the bike for what you want to do on it. Even a light, rigid 29er is still an offroad bike.

I’ve seen you state this before and I find this really hard to believe. either you are really, really fast on your mtb, or really really slow on a road bike.

I can email you over the Strava figures, but here’s how they look

Ride1
29.31 km
1h:04m:42s
27.2 km/h

Ride2
29.32 km
1h:07m:04s

Honestly fella.. Now I accept I’m no superstar… but that’s not a terrible speed over a 30km is it ?

I don’t have the Strave figure for the Meta as Strava is down, but i’ll get it later on today and put in… but it was I think a 1h08min30s

edit: Strava back up

29.3km
Distance

278m
Elevation

1:08:01
Moving Time

785
Calories

–

Equal amount of effort on both attempts or knackered after mtb and fresh as a daisy post road bike?

Gotama – Member

Equal amount of effort on both attempts or knackered after mtb and fresh as a daisy post road bike?

Impossible to say mate, they were over the course of 2-3 months, I’ve got others I could find in Strava too I bet, but I doubt the differences are massive either way, 1 could have been windier, one could have been sunnier, 1 I may have trained harder the days before… but essentially, for me, the difference isn’t as massive as you’d think. The Road bike was admittedly a Halfords Carrera TDF, running lighter wheels and 25c tyres at 100psi, the Ralphs were up to about 55-60psi for that.

Reggie – what is the difference in position? Assuming a longer stem in ‘road mode’ could stretch things out? Presumably the mtb will be higher at the front.

The most interesting part for me was a particular climb which is at my fastest 1min58s on the Roadie, 1min59 on the Charge and 2.01 on the Meta LOL. Very very small difference uphill, despite the weight etc.

http://www.strava.com/segments/778259?filter=overall

sorry, not having a go, just seems very surprising but then I try and ride mtb on the road as little as possible and only run heavy, sticky tyres.

Out of interest, up that same hill Weeksy linked to, there’s 11 seconds difference between my fastest road bike time and my fastest MTB time with the MTB being the slowest. 13.7mph on the MTB and 15.5mph on the road bike.

Fwiw, I wouldn’t be afraid of road riding your MTB. I find (probably unsurprisingly) the longer I ride my MTB on the road in one spell, the slower my road bike speeds are and the more road bike riding I do, the slower I am when I get back on the MTB.

Your gaps are surprisingly large considering your mountain bike is a light efficient bike and your road bike is cheap and cheerful. Maybe my road bike was even worse than yours ha ha.

To the OP I have to say I gave had similar thoughts

I know my wrist stopped being able to deal with drops. It may be fine now, it may not

I have a slicked MTB for road use and wondered about this in the role you describe

I think if you are going rigid a frame not designed for a suspension fork is a better idea

Seem goodish value at a grand. (thats ignoring the hubs)

£500 extra gets it in carbon

Is it just another hybrid. I think not. Proper long to tube to start with

@weeksy I don’t know why you’re always down on the Triban- it gets awesome reviews:

Mines better spec than this one:
http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/reviews/road-bikes/btwin-triban-500se
http://road.cc/content/review/116333-btwin-triban-500-se-road-bike

Same as this one but with proper twin paddle shifters:
http://www.bikeradar.com/road/gear/category/bikes/road/product/review-btwin-triban-5-black-14-48520/

Edit- so yes, of course yours was worse than mine 😀

Reggie – what is the difference in position? Assuming a longer stem in ‘road mode’ could stretch things out? Presumably the mtb will be higher at the front.

Yup. Lower, narrower front end means more aero and you use your glutes more and quads less, which is better for road work.

On the 29er even if you lean as far forward as you can it’s just not sustainable over any distance. You can obviously lower the 29ers front end by picking a longer, flipped stem, and fit narrower bars, which will help but you’ll always be chasing your tail and the CXer will have the edge.

It runs a mix of cx style tyres so I can do a bit of exploring with road/trail as well as road tyres for 50 mile road only rides.

Wouldn’t fancy a 29er geo for that, personally, but have done similar on mine and it was ok. Feels fine for a more tour-y approach. Maybe flip the stem on the CX bike, drop the saddle a little if you can, 20-30mm less saddle-to-bar drop may be easy to achieve and makes a real difference.
Ime etc Jones bars can give a similar position to road hoods in some ways if you use the same stem so that could do it.

What about narrow-ish flats and L bar ends on the crosser?

Just a note on the FF29 (and I really really love mine with a 120mm fork), it may not be the lightest option. In large it comes in at a gram shy of 2 kilos, which is OK but nothing special. However, it is very stiff, which would work well for what you are proposing.

So randomly jumping in here. There’s a road climb near me that climbs about 700 feet over a couple of miles or so. It’s a 15 -20 min kinda deal, not too steep but fairly long.

A couple of summers ago I did it on my soul 26″ mtb with nobby nics on. The next morning I bought a cannondale caad 8 sora £700 road bike and did the same climb. I took nearly 5 minutes off my time.

Make of that what you will but in my experience, even a half decent road bike covers ground a lot quicker.

JoB – Member
you will have created a Hybrid,

😆

I rode my MTB with slicks regularly on the road to link up non technically challenging trails – built up a CX stylee (AKA drop bar rigid hybrid – adventure gravel racer) because got fed up with struggling into headwinds in the more sat up position on an MTB – i rarely use drops for descending ( i just don’t go that fast) but in a persistent headwind use the drops and you can see the immediate impact on speed with reduced effort saving vital energy for beer consumption on return

So randomly jumping in here. There’s a road climb near me that climbs about 700 feet over a couple of miles or so. It’s a 15 -20 min kinda deal, not too steep but fairly long.

A couple of summers ago I did it on my soul 26″ mtb with nobby nics on. The next morning I bought a cannondale caad 8 sora £700 road bike and did the same climb. I took nearly 5 minutes off my time.

Make of that what you will but in my experience, even a half decent road bike covers ground a lot quicker.

Not necessarily. Depends on so many factors. Last year, after 3 months of consistent training on my Scott Spark 920, I rode a local 16 mile TT course (fairly hilly) in 52:32 @17.8mph on it
Thinking a road bike was going to add instant speed, I bought one and a couple of weeks later rode the same course in 52:21 or 0.1mph faster 😉

Fast forward to this year and a few weeks consistently riding the road bike saw me drop that time to 49:18 @ 19.0mph but it’s not always as simple as suggested ^

On the flat I dare say you wouldn’t notice much difference in speed. One thing I find though, and I go from road to MTB on slicks a lot, is that the road bike encourages you to ride faster. The MTB with its more relaxed position will have you humming away, daydreaming down the road.

Agree with the comments about the bars above too. Although it took me quite a while to actually like drops, wide flat bars feel completely wrong on the road now – unless you’re having a relaxed pootle around the park. Half my time is spent with my hands in the centre or them…

To the OP: why not set the bike up so you can use the drops? Raise the bars and bring them closer to you with a shorter stem. Then practice riding on them.

Drops offer five hand positions against one for flat bars.

Interesting, thanks all. Just checked the stack height on a Niner Air9 compared to their RLT and it comes out at 624 for the Air and 610 for the RLT so the front end is lower but not by all that much. It does sound like I will end up trying to force a bike into being something it isn’t though.

TiRed – I have the bars as high as I can get them on the steerer and the stem is pretty short anyway (70mm). I suspect a lack of flexibility is the main part of my issue. It a;lso just feels uncomfortable (hand comfort rather than back) to put my hand in the section of the curve where I can cover the levers. If I move the levers down on the bars then they will be too low for riding on the hoods. That said I have just left them where they came from the factory.

It a;lso just feels uncomfortable (hand comfort rather than back) to put my hand in the section of the curve where I can cover the levers.

i’m pretty sure it will be a majority verdict that when rising on the drops you can’t reach the levers to brake – if you see trouble ahead then sit up or I just went and checked to make sure wasn’t being dumb – sliding your hands up the curve into the braking position becomes a reflex habit if the unexpected happens or you need to scrub a bit of speed then back to the drops proper

The most interesting part for me was a particular climb which is at my fastest 1min58s on the Roadie, 1min59 on the Charge and 2.01 on the Meta LOL. Very very small difference uphill, despite the weight etc.

http://www.strava.com/segments/778259?filter=overall

To be fair a 600m long hill with a relatively low gradient isn’t much of a comparison. And at 16-17kph aerodynamics have very little affect so it’s all down to weight and rolling resistance and as the weight of the Carrera will be (I’m guessing) around 11-12kg it won’t actually be that much lighter than your Charge or the Commencal for that matter, so in the end it comes down to rolling resistance. Crapola heavy & hard road tyres v’s very good fast rolling MTB tyres – which probably weigh very similar to each other.

I could pick Streatley hill, but I don’t have all my times to hand and am not sure on this one, but fitness has been a greater influence on my results there than bike type.

I’m not saying my results will be the same for everyone, but in simple terms, over an hours riding, the difference for me personally isn’t that much that I care either way.

I don’t know what kind of drop bars you have already, but it could be worth getting some compact ones if you haven’t already (go as compact as you can get = shallow drop). On-one/planet-x do some good ones cheap. The hand positions on a shallower drop are more comfortable, and you use them a lot more…

I think MTB on the road is great for crap surfaced lanes, gravel short cuts etc. My commute is about 75mins on really potholed lanes with gravel centres, mud etc. The 29er with Ron front and Ralph rear at about 40 and 45psi is much better than the road bike with much less worry over potholes etc., good brakes and more forgiveness/comfort.

My position is quite agressive with bars 4.5cm lower than saddle and with bar ends adding an extra position. It works very well and is fun.