You beat me to it! I seem to have missed a lot in the discussion….but but not this
Braking and Turning Your Bicycle.
Joe
Bicycle quarterly also confirmed it in actual tests on actual bikes. No link as it was in the periodical (sorry)
Joe
Actually here it is How to Brake on a Bicycle – Rene Herse Cycles
This, like some other related discussions about the ideal vs the real are funny to me at times. Sure, in nearly scientifically sterile situations and environments, those things (front only with rear lift = best) are true.
But once we get beyond these controlled tests and into the countless variables outside (mixed road surface texture, cleanliness, crown, wind, humidity, moisture) and the lovely nature of riding in groups… the reality is that mixed brake application is likely best.
I get it and understand the “perfect” solution here, but in my 3 decades of riding and racing just about every bike genre there is, a decent mix of brake use tends to rule the day. Exceptions surely exist when we add in loose surfaces, non-straight braking and other stuff, so I will again mention that reality includes more nuance than many of these 1-sentence summaries can properly address.
Well, I think this discussion was pretty clear that it was not pertaining to real world stopping. I go years without having a need for a “max stopping power event.”
This is all not particularly applicable to everyday riding of course.
We are one step away from somebody quoting that lunatic Grant Peterson
I honestly have never given this much thought in the 14 years I’ve been riding/racing. I just pull the brakes and I stop lol.
how? He is a researcher who hasn’t made any incredible breakthroughs altho I do follow his training philosophy.
electrolyte drink mixes are not worth it. The only electrolyte you need to replace during exercise is sodium.
High carb drink mixes are incredibly overpriced and the science isn’t settled on glucose:fructose ratio.
This is just true.
I like having/using front and rear brakes, but the front is by far the most important and the rear is optional for road.
In my younger/poorer days during college, I had an old peugeot road bike that rolled 27" wheels, but ended up running a 700 wheel in the rear for years (rendering the rear brake inoperable). Honestly never missed it.
That said, I still wear out rear pads quicker than front because I use the rear to scrub/control speed and there just aren’t many situations where hard braking (ie heavy front brake) is needed. But when you need it, you need it and I agree that the rear is doing next to nothing in these situations. For folks saying that the rear contributes during max braking if your technique is good, I’d disagree and I think this pic (below) from the previously linked article tells the story. Maybe he could get a little lower or further back, but unless you get to the point where you are skidding the front tire, the rear is contributing nothing significant during max braking (even if it’s not off the ground, there isn’t enough weight on it to have meaningful traction).
Ah, new unpopular opinion. Grant is a very nice guy and the core of his cycling messaging is sound (Have a bike that fits. If you aren’t a racer, bike comfort should be your first priority. Avoid the latest trend.) I’ll admit that he is a little too retro grouch for my taste. (IIR, He isn’t a fan of that term.)
Rivendell was building ‘gravel’ bikes for decades before the current fashion.
I didn’t say he wasn’t, but that doesn’t negate he is out there. His ideas are objectively less comfortable to me than a modern race bike. And his book is looney.
IMO old touring bikes were just gravel bikes. Or…new gravel bikes are just 90s mountain bikes or old touring bikes.
This is just another way of saying bikes as a whole arent complicated.
Road bikes are just regular bikes with some of the other stuff you dont think you’ll use stripped off.
Unpopular opinion: Gravel bikes share almost nothing in common with 90s MTBs - which featured triple cranksets, 73mm bottom bracket shells, 26" wheels, rim brakes, flat handlebars, challenging stack and reach geometry, hair-raising front end geometry, and so on.
The lineage from pre-history to modern gravel bikes never needed a flatbar MTB ancestor given that a straight line to the 2013 Raleigh Tamland can be drawn directly from Rough Stuff/Technical Trials bikes post-WW2 when road racing became paved road racing to Charlie Cunningham’s drop-bar CCPROTO in 1979, through the Bianchi Volpe, 90s CX/CT bikes, 2000s Rapha Continental bikes, etc.
Starting in the mid/late 1980s, Bianchi attempted to create an entire 700c wheeled 3rd category in between MTB-Road segment called “Cross-Terrain” that were gravel bikes in all but name.
These are from 1991
90s MTBs were a dead end and no type of modern bike shares anything more than cursory commonality with them. Meanwhile 90s CX bike geometry slowly evolved into Gravel geometry and the two types bikes share many common traits today and essentially intermingle as a category with outliers designed to maximize trends beneficial to one or the other.
Fixed that for you lol.
Unpopular opinion: 90% of what makes a bike the type of bike it is is what tires you put on it.
You can make any gravel bike a road bike for $75.
BRB… gonna slap some 700c Enve tubeless wheels and tires onto a Trek Session and slay everyone on the next road ride 
I just had to look up what that was. Would be fun though haha.