![\"Dr](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/hSPLqVjnkWwNR3C7UKCbEk.jpg\")
<\/p>\nI do almost all of my riding on the road. Partly that\u2019s my preference, partly it\u2019s because I live in a part of the country where the off-road options are limited. If you\u2019re still keen, you can thread rides together by adding up lots of short bridleways and field edges with bits of road and the odd longer path, but you\u2019ve really got to want to do it.<\/p>\n
I did go through a phase a few years ago where I tried to ride my MTB more, but I had a deadly combination of a desire to ride hard, an ability to kick out quite a lot of power, and minimal off-roading skills. I was like a Ford Focus with a jet engine. I\u2019d hurl myself down tracks at 400 watts, and to say I fell off a lot would only begin to cover my interactions with the terrain. In fact, I fell off always.<\/p>\n
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Multiple TT national champion, best selling author, coach and commentator, Dr Hutch writes exclusively for Cycling Weekly each week.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n I enjoy watching off road racing, though. I watched the European cyclocross champs last week, and lost count of the number of times I\u2019d have fallen over. The skill levels are stunning.<\/p>\n Article continues below <\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n But here is my question. And I\u2019ll be up front about the fact it is from the perspective of an outsider. What\u2019s going on with all the off-road bike categories? Toon Aerts won the Euros. On a road frame. Granted, somewhat cross-ified (There is actually a word for this, which is \u201ccrucified\u201d, but it\u2019s a bit blasphemous) but a road frame all the same.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the manufacturer Pearson is equipping its cyclocross riders with gravel bikes this season. And at the Three Peaks cyclocross race, Lachlan Morton<\/a> rode a gravel bike. Gravel bikes are banned for the Three Peaks, so he turned it into a cross bike by fitting narrower tyres.<\/p>\n Then there are flat-bar gravel bikes that are, I\u2019m often told, nothing at all like an old rigid mountain bike. Despite looking identical.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not finished. I recently read a group test of all-road bikes, which were described as occupying the gap between endurance road bikes<\/a> and the racier end of gravel bikes. As I\u2019ve already admitted, this isn\u2019t exactly my area of expertise, but that sounds like a very, very small target to fire a bike at. I reckon I could make my S-Works SL8 road bike into a workable all-road bike by letting 25 psi out of each tyre and being sanguine about the odd puncture.<\/p>\n It does remind me of other things that I do understand better. In the 2000s, manufacturers would maintain that there was such a thing as a \u201ccrit\u201d bike \u2013 a special road bike that was better on short circuits because\u2026 well, who the hell knew. Geometry, yada yada, responsiveness, yada yada.<\/p>\n Think this sort of thing is an artefact of the past? Without looking it up, can you tell me whether we are, right now in the late autumn of 2025, in a period where \u201caero bikes\u201d and \u201cclimbing bikes\u201d are two separate things? Or are we in one of those halcyon months where they\u2019ve been unified into bikes that are both light and aero? This is a question I should know the answer to, but I don\u2019t think anyone can keep track.<\/p>\n A cynical person might think that part of what\u2019s going on here is an industry that\u2019s still getting over the pandemic and wants to sell multiple bikes to each customer, and reckons that the more categories it can find between track bike and full-suspension MTB the better.<\/p>\n What to read next<\/p>\n If that\u2019s the case, I\u2019m happy to do my bit for the industry. I\u2019ll just mention my friend Bernard, who recently texted me an image of a cracked wheel. \u201cI don\u2019t need a gravel bike,\u201d he said. \u201cI need a pothole bike.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s just a suggestion.<\/p>\n