I read a review of a cyclocross bike in Bicycling magazine a few days ago: it described the bike as "the Swiss Army knife of bikes: fun, remarkably useful and pretty sharp, too... The bike is influenced by cyclocross, but it's hardly a pure race bike. To wit, it has touring and commuter features such as braze-ons for racks and a down-the-middle geometry that's neither too steep nor too slack. The bike can hop curbs, charge a half-mile of light singletrack and rumble unfazed over pothols, rocks and roots, whether you're heading to work or just having fun." This has been what I've been looking for in a bike for several months. Essentially, I want a fast, comfortable, well rounded road bike (I don't want a mountain or hybrid bike) that I can race with, tour with, or commute with. There are two types of bikes that ride like this. Touring bikes and cyclocross bikes, but what exactly is the difference? Which am I best off with? What kind of conditions (aside from off road riding) will make one preferable over the other?
Bike buying advice · Public discussion
cyclocross or touring?
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- KSanchez
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A cyclocross bike is typically a bit shorter in wheelbase and a bit quicker to initiate turns than a dedicated touring bike but in many ways they're similar with a more relaxed geometry than a pure race bike, cantilever brake bosses and big clearance forks to handle oversized 700c tires.
There's no doubt my cross bike is the most versatile bike I own and it's plenty comfortable as well as plenty fast. I usually ride it with 32c cross knobbies but have mounted up road tires a number of times for rainy weather commuting, fast winter training rides, full century rides and even one race when my road bike was in the shop. It performs well in a very wide range of conditions and realistically with the current cyclocross boom you're far more likely to find a good selection of cross bikes at reasonable prices than purebread touring bikes that aren't tanks. A true touring bike will often have a few more braze ons for racks and bags and sometimes a third set of bottle brazeons (often underneath the downtube) but those have become something of a rarity these days.
But yes, if you're looking for a fast, comfortable and versatile bike for both road and dirt it's hard to go wrong with a cross bike.
-Dave
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I agree with davery, a cross bike is a solid all around bike. If you can only afford one bike and want it to almost anything the cross bike is the way to go. A cross bike with simply changing the rims too a narrow rim and smooth tires you could road race, slap on the original rims and knobby tires and you could go off road, or wide smooth tires or close pack knobby and you could tour on it. Only problem with Cross bikes is they don't usually come with a way of mounting panniers to the front which means you will have to pack lighter then other touring bikes can pack...but you could always tour with a trailer if you wanted more stuff to carry. So the cross bike for what you describe you want a bike to do sounds like the perfect solution. Depending on how much you want to spend, Motobecane at Bikes Direct has a Titanium cross bike for only $1695...yes I did say titanium, and it's equipped with Sram Rival.
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