Seems like something he’s capable of, particularly in the heat of the moment.
I like VC’s content and he seems like a good guy (and clearly a much stronger cyclist than me), but I don’t think he’s too mechanically inclined. And his attention to detail seems to be “off” at times. I’m guessing he wouldn’t argue those points either, he tends to be pretty self-deprecating on a lot of stuff.
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Pretty sure VC uses some stupid setup with an oval Rotor chainring. Not sure what he was riding when he dropped his chain, but I know he also was putting on wider than suggested tires on an Ultimate in one of his videos, potentially that could cause some issues especially once you hit mud.
Personally I’ve never dropped a chain with a regular sram 42T/10-50 setup.
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Unpopular opinions from a mountain biker…
The science on efficiency on road or indoor trainer doesn’t paint the whole picture on bumpy wildly varying terrain, where steady application of watts is not always possible.
Also, mud - you lose way more efficiency when your drivetrain is coated in it, and your front derailleur stops working anyway.
Narrow bars might help in the wind on flat stuff, but are sketchy (and slow you down) on technical descents.
Point being- stuff you learned about road efficiency doesn’t always apply neatly to “gravel”.
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Good points, well made. It’s also worth noting that many of the finer details about chain lines, the efficiency of different ratios, and the rule of 105, disappear or are minimised by riders on the road who have an upright position, loose clothing, unshaven legs, etc etc. So much gets lost in the noise, and we can all be guilty of majoring in the minors.
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100% this.
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Disagree here…these are not mutually exclusive things. You can focus on these things independently or all together. The benefits gained from focusing on drivetrain efficiency are not lost simply because you are wearing loose fitting clothes or a poor position.
Now, whether you are focusing on the right gains in proper order is another question… 
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I quite agree they’re not mutually exclusive. I was rather making the point that I quite frequently see riders fixating on relatively marginal gains, while ignoring other factors than could make a more significant difference to performance.
I don’t deny that at the sharp end of racing, for those who have more or less maximised their physical abilities, looking at the handful of watts lost here and there around the bike can and does make a meaningful difference. I’m also not suggesting we should all ride box-section alloys and write odes to Grant Petersen.
My argument is much more that for the overwhelming majority of recreational riders (and most riders on here are recreational riders, even if they choose to race as part of that recreation) these minor things simply don’t matter. They would be much better advised to fry the big fish (fishes?) first, or (to use a more visual metaphor) to start at the broad end of the triangle not the pointy one.
I think the 1x vs 2x for gravel efficiency argument is a great example of looking at the pointy end rather than the broad one. Others may disagree.
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Agreed!
Shocks! Aero bars! Lucky!
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The assumption that marginal gains disappear in the real world has come up a few times on the forum and podcast. (Jonathan has mentioned similar points a few times when talking about marginal gains and whatnot). In some instances that might be true. However, in most, we cannot conclude either way. It could just as easily be true that if a 2x setup is more efficient with a clean chain that it is even more efficient with a dirty chain. I don’t know if that is true or not, but it is hard to quantify “dirty chains” so studying it is very difficult.
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Even looking at the pointy end, I don’t see a consistent trend at the pointy end of gravel races for a 2x setup.
On long gravel and other offroad races there are other factors, too, which come into play such as reliability. It is the same with tires, on some races it is just better to opt for a slower (= higher rolling resistance) tire that offers more puncture protection as in the grand scheme of things provides a better compromise.
This argument sounds like a mechanistic argument (as opposed to looking at statistics at the end): it is logically sound, but I don’t see that playing out at the end. I don’t see a strong trend towards 2x on the pointy end of gravel races.
From my perception, if there is a preference, it seems to me that it has more to do with where the athlete came from, from the road side of things (higher chance of them going 2x) or from a mountain bike (more likely to go 1x). Then there are sponsorship commitments: if you are sponsored by Shimano, guess what, you’ll be racing 2x, no matter your personal preference.
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Just to jump into the discussion swinging,
I did all of my gravel races on 2x. I spent 2 years racing with Shimano Ultegra 52/36 and then about half a year on SRAM 48/35. The shimano was just standard Ultegra, pre-GRX. I lived in the Southeast USA, with many races using the Appalachian Mountains or foothills. I podiumed in many of the “pro” level races and took 2nd overall in (arguably?) the biggest gravel series in the Southeast. Dylan Johnson was 1st that year.
Aside from the weight savings, I don’t see why 1x has become a gravel thing. A gravel race is a road race with some bumpy terrain. I wouldn’t run 1x in a road race (yet). I was all 1x on my mountain bikes though. However, I thought Di2 was silly when it first came out… and then I thought disc brakes looked weird… so maybe I’m just out of touch.
Also as a small sidenote, you could run 1x shimano if you wanted to. Kerry Werner raced US CX Nats on a 1x Shimano setup.
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I’ve seen quite a lot of riders running big-big on their road or gravel bikes, or small-small. I’m not sure the chain line optimisation of 2x occurs in the real world anyway.
That’s very respectable, kudos!
I think that connects nicely with the conjecture I had earlier and why gravel is so popular: from the sound of it you are coming from the road side, so you regard it as a “road race over bumpy terrain”. Depending on the gravel race (because they really span the gamut), I think mountain bikers could approach this as a XC marathon race over very easy terrain. As a recovering mountain biker, I still feel it is more natural to not shift too much over bumpy terrain, the “good” gear could be too hard or too easy in a few seconds.
In my mind, that’s why gravel is so popular, it sits at the intersection of the Venn diagram of races roadies and mountain bikers are interested. And IMHO that’s why Shimano in particular should do better and give people better choices for its gravel groupsets, including those who want to go 1x.
A few years back I remember seeing a pro who was sponsored by Shimano with a 1x setup for CX races. He asked his mechanics to take a 53/39 chainset (I think you see where this is going), saw off the teeth of the 53-tooth chainring and use the FD as a chain guide.
However, I don’t think you cannot run Shimano 1x as a pro, Shimano simply doesn’t offer enough chainring sizes (40- and 42-tooth only). I think Keegan ran a 48-tooth chainring coupled to a 10–50 or 10–52 cassette when he did Unbound. Needless to say that 48:10 = 4.80 is a vastly different gear than 42:11 = 3.82.
Most people I know, including myself when I rode a road bike with 2x, would often prefer to cross chain, especially for small kickers where you’d rather muscle up the hill rather than shift in the front. Especially shifting up at the top could be very tedious.
It was also the reason why I kept my 11–32 cassette rather than go for a 11–28: on the former, I would ride all gears up until 50:28 = 1.79 (the 28-tooth cog being the second-easiest in the rear). With a 11–28 cassette that’d be 50:25 = 2.0.
Exactly, and most people aren’t strong enough to ride everywhere in the 53 or 50 or whatever a gravel big rind is and 11 cog.
A 1x gives you a better chance of having the right sized chainring for the middle of the cassette, and a better usable chain line.
Also, less excess chain.
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This is a very good point, which strictly speaking isn’t an advantage of 1x, but in practice, it is: With SRAM 1x, you can pick between 38-tooth and 54-tooth chainrings in 2-tooth increments. You can go smaller with different cranks or larger with boutique chainrings. Having the right gear ratios makes riding so much more enjoyable.
I have long felt that road bike gearing was way too hard for most. Most road bike customers are not at 4+ W/kg, but somehow gearing pretends that many are. On the other hand, there is so much anxiety about gearing at the top end. Yes, that might be a valid concern for a select few, but completely irrelevant for most customers.
While in principle, Shimano and SRAM — but especially Shimano — could introduce cranks with smaller chainrings for road bikes, with their latest release they even went in the opposite direction, 53/39 has been replaced by 54/40. Instead, I would have hoped for 46/30, but for road groupsets (as far as I know GRX and Shimano road cranks have slightly different chain lines, etc.). For gravel I’d probably want to sell something even easier.
A guy I know from another forum is in his 70s and still doing long-distance events (audaxes, etc.). He’s smart enough to have adjusted his gearing. Last year he switched from a 28-tooth small ring to a 26-tooth small ring. He is super fit (he has done a mile century at least once a month for over ten years), but just into riding at a slower pace and his challenge is not speed, but making it to the destination within a time window. He uses a Sugino crank with a Shimano road groupset.
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I was almost exclusively racing mountain bikes in the Southeast before the gravel scene. I was Cat 1 / Elite regional champ one year, and then won the same series the next but it was no longer the regional championship 
. We also had a really good 6 hour series which I targeted. However, in college I raced road and mountain.
From a MTB point of view I find gravel boring? But, from a road point of view it’s exciting. It also did fill a niche as road events were drying up and gravel started to fill the calendar. Having raced Marathon & 6 hour XC events as well as road races, I think Gravel is much more similar to road. Maybe MTB only folks only have the experience of 1x, so it’s what they stick with.
To quote ol Kerry: “Two major things have me preferring GRX for cyclocross and gravel. The ergonomics of the hoods are a bit bigger and the braking has a more positive feel and the clutch is stronger and stiffer leading to more consistently precise shifting and no dropped chains. I have been using a single 42t chainring all year. Depending on the race, if dry I’ll use a DURA-ACE 28t cassette for a tighter gear group, and in the mud I use an ULTEGRA 32t cassette for a bit more range. With the 42t chainring I have never spun out and never felt like I needed more gears.”
I think talking about gear rations can be helpful, but it also means you can get a bit bogged down in the numbers. There are so many other variables that I think are more important, like a rider’s preffered cadence and style.
Having said that… I’m probably a great candidate for a 1x setup. But, I prefer my 2x. Also not sure why it’s saying 50, I guess I need to update my Wahoo app. It’s a 48. I also did not often use my little ring on my Shimano equipped bike. But, I was happy to have it.
This x1000
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I don’t know. Cadence is linked to gear ratios, i. e. if you want your cadence to stay above a certain threshold and you cannot/do not want to increase power, you need an easier gear to climb the same incline at the same speed. Before I went 1x on my road bike, I carefully considered what gears I was using and what cadences I preferred. I even (correctly) predicted that my preferred cadence would go up but 3–5 % as I went from 172.5 mm cranks to 165 mm cranks. I made the correct choice for me. I wish SRAM gave me the option to replace the 10-tooth gear by a 9-tooth gear. The hardest gear is only used as an overdrive, so a large gear jump wouldn’t feel uncomfortable.
I can see how this might be beyond the average person, but bike shops and more importantly, bike and groupset manufacturers should get the hint.
That sounds as if the terrain is rather flat. I have a 42-tooth chainring on my road bike, and there’d be many road climbs around here I would not be able to get up comfortably in a 42:32 or 42:28. (Comfortably means with a cadence above 70 rpm at a reasonable power.) From the sound of it, I am nowhere near as quick as you, but I’m above average in terms of W and W/kg.
Judging by the numbers, yeah, very easily. You could get a 1x setup with a 42-tooth chainring. Your favorite gear 48:17 = 2.82 would then be realized in the 15-tooth cog, i. e. just one gear up. With a SRAM setup you would lose a smidge at the top (42:10 = 4.20 vs. 48:11 = 4.36). With a 10–44 cassette, you’d get roughly the same small gear (I don’t think you said what cassette you’re running, I’m going off the assumption it is a 11–34 cassette, the widest that GRX officially supports at the moment).
Of course, this is just straightforward math, and if you are happy with your setup, I don’t think there is any need to change it.
PS Just to re-emphasize: I think this is a matter of personal preference, and the only thing I’d strongly advocate for is giving riders the choice. There is no universally wrong answer.
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