From Road.cc
by LIAM CAHILL
Tyre clearance, geometry, gearing and more. There’s a lot that separates an endurance bike from a gravel bike
We made a video explaining the differences between a road race bike and an endurance bike and the comments section was littered with literally a few of you asking us to make a similar video comparing endurance bikes and gravel bikes. Well, ask and you shall receive.
But before we start delving into the details, it may well be helpful for some of you if we have a look at what gravel bikes and endurance bikes actually are.
An endurance bike sits in the road category. It is generally considered to be something that is designed for comfort and efficiency over longer rides and for this reason, these bikes are very popular with recreational and club road riders.
A gravel bike, meanwhile, is a bike that is designed primarily to be capable on unpaved gravel tracks. ‘Gravel bike’ is, to be honest, a bit of a null and void term these days because, like the term ‘road bike’, it encompasses too many niches. There are gravel bikes for super-keen racers, people that want to go cycle camping and there’s even a gravel bike type called monster gravel bikes. They’re for ridiculously gnarly stuff.
In fact, there are often rather large overlaps in real-world user cases when it comes to gravel and endurance bikes. This is most commonly seen when you take the more relaxed end of the endurance bike market and the more road-orientated end of the gravel bike market. And it is also well worth mentioning that both bike types are very popular with commuters.
But the basic premise is that an endurance road bike goes a long way on the road in comfort and a gravel bike opens up the stuff that you can’t do on a road bike.
Photo by Viktor Bystrov on Unsplash
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