Last summer I saw more and more people with things that looked like racing bikes but were a bit more sturdy and at the same time seemed - I don’t know how to put it - casual (?) to me. I looked around a bit and learnt that these were “gravel bikes” that I had heard about before. For some reason I had always imaged “gravel bikes” to be those mountain bikes with really fat tires. No idea why. All of a sudden, though, I was interested!
That could be something that could help me work on my fitness WHILE being a fast and lightweight way to commute! As much as I love my e-bike, there is one thing it is definitely not: lightweight. At the same time I didn’t want to dive into yet another rabbit hole. I started looking for a mostly commute-ready option and eventually stumbled upon the Cube NuRoad. They also had a fully-equipped (FE) variant which comes with lights and a rear carrier. Luckily there was a Cube store in Graz AND Klagenfurt and so I could talk to the folks there about what I had in mind. Eventually I settled on the NuRoad Race FE.
Over the last couple of months I’ve had to go quite frequently from Graz to Klagenfurt for various appointments. While the public transport at each end is excellent, I missed having a bike with me. A couple of weeks ago I took my e-bike with me on such a trip and it was great there, but getting it to and from Klagenfurt was extremely annoying! In German ICEs and Austrian Railjets you’re mostly supposed to hang your bike from a hook. Lifting a 23kg+ bike in such a tight space wasn’t easy. It worked but it was a struggle.
Then I did the same trip with my lightweight gravel bike and that story was a completely different one. I didn’t have to take the elevators at the train station, I could simply carry the bike between overpass and platform. I didn’t struggle with getting the bike on the train and onto the hook but could treat it somehow like a simple bag. Once the door next to the bike compartment was defect and so I had to carry the bike through the whole car from another door. This would not have worked with my e-bike.
So, now I have a gravel bike that I use for commuting to places where my e-bike would simply not go. At the same time I try to use it also for intra-city commuting to get more secure on it while improving my fitness. This doesn’t yet mean that I will also use it for “proper” gravel biking in the future. I might, it looks like a nice hobby and it’s probably something that could be more fun than going to the gym. I’ll have to learn a lot, though! From doing a standing start over re-learning when and how to shift gears properly to just relaxing my upper body enough to better distribute my weight and not feeling every single bump in the road. But even if I stick with commuting, this will we fun!
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