Jeremy Powers: Now, whether you race road 100% of the time or you just love cyclocross
and playing in the mud, we can agree that there are a few key differences between
the two disciplines. Also, whether you race or you just go out and train, and do social rides,
today's video is going to be about which one is harder, road or cyclocross?
Many of you will know that I'm absolutely crazy for cyclocross. It's 38 and raining right now,
just for instance, and I'm out here doing this video. I love it.
To make this a fair comparison and to hash this out completely, I decided to call up a
very experienced road pro to hash this out, and, well, unfortunately, they weren't available,
so we've got Conor and Manon today. Conor Dunne: Thanks, Jeremy, I suppose.
Anyway, I'm a bit different to Jeremy. I've spent my career
racing on the nice smooth roads of France and the hills of Tuscany, rubber side down, of course,
but I'll tell you what, I think road riding is definitely harder than cyclocross, and I've got
a mate to back me up. What do you think, Manon? Manon Lloyd: It sounds like we better get this
decided for good. Let's go. Conor: Come on.
[music] Conor:
Before we get started, let's do a poll and get it going on the GCN app. What do you guys think?
Is road harder or cyclocross? Get voting. Manon: Way harder road is, definitely.
Conor: Jeremy doesn't know what he's talking about.
Manon: No. Conor: For starters, road is always going
to be harder than cyclocross because it's way, way longer. Look at races like Milan-San Remo,
for example, 300-plus kilometers. You don't get that when you're heading off-road, do you?
Manon: Yes, and most races, apart from Milan-San Remo, are over 200 kilometers,
and think, that's like five or six hours in the saddle, long, long days. You could do
five or six cyclocross races for that. Conor: Exactly, and when you're heading
out at the weekend on your club ride, it's going to be three or four hours longer
than a cross ride and way, way harder as a result. Jeremy: All right, this one's not necessarily
about which one's harder or not but I have to say this, everyone's always looking for the last 50
k of a road race because who could ever sit into five hours of road racing? Cyclocross, one hour,
boom, bang, done. You don't have to think about that. If you're a spectator,
you can see everything from one vantage point, you get to eat beer and Fritz and listen to good
music. Whereas on the road, you're sitting on the side of the road eating wine and cheese and
waiting around for the road race to finish, and then you look at a little TV screen to find out
what happened at the end. Who wants to do any of that? Plus, there are sweet technical features
like this. Ah, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Conor:
Okay, I'm not going to pull any punches here but road is just way more competitive than cyclocross.
Look at the likes of van Aert and van der Poel. They win everything in cyclocross and
I know they're on top of their game when on the road but they don't win everything. They're not
winning the Tour de France, they're not top of the GC in Grand Tours, are they?
Manon: I do have to agree with you, Conor. You do get cyclists coming from other disciplines
within the sport to try their luck on the road and then you just get this huge pool
of cyclists competing to be the best of the best. Jeremy: All right, I'll give you that. Road
racing's town pool, definitely deeper but at the top of cyclocross, the best
are still the best, even on road racing. Wout van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel, Marianne Vos,
Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, just to name a few. When you see road riders go over to cyclocross, the
results are a little mixed. We've all seen that video of Brad Wiggins. Whereas when you see the
cross riders go to the road, you see some decent results. The truth is, this isn't about which one
is more popular, it's about which one is harder. Manon: Road is just way more varied as well. One
day you could be climbing a 20-kilometer mountain, the next, you could be battling
in the crosswinds and then you could be riding along the worst cobbles Belgium has to offer.
Conor: When riding on the road, you have to be used to a whole host of different circumstances
and scenarios but cyclocross, on the other hand, you only have to train for a certain
length of event on a similar terrain and be good at that one thing, am I right?
Manon: Yes, just ride in mud, doesn't it? Jeremy: You guys are crazy and those are
some very hurtful things that you've said about cyclocross. I know that road riders deal with some
nasty conditions too, of course, but the crossers have to deal with mud, steep climbs, running off
the bike, cobblestones, ruts, and don't forget the horrible weather. With it being a fall or winter
sport, freezing rain, snow, mud, that's all the norm. Think of road like a knife that only
butters bread. Whereas cyclocross is like a Swiss army knife where you have all the tools that you
need for any conditions that you'll see. That's how I'd like to compare road and cyclocrossers.
Conor: There's just much more to lose on the road really, isn't there? If
you mess things up and crash, you're highly likely to do damage and break bones. Meaning
a long road back to recovery and full form. Manon: Yes. Cyclocross on the other hand, if you
crash well, you're landing on mud. That's nothing, you can just jump back on and carry on, but road,
well, I feel like there's a lot more obstacles to tackle and it's a bit of a mental battle, I find.
Jeremy: I don't know that getting hurt and breaking more stuff is a big wow factor for
most people when they think about racing on the road versus cyclocross. I like to think of
cyclocross as the gateway to cycling as a whole discipline. Gets a lot of young kids involved,
their parents can watch them rip around a course for eight minutes a lap. In my opinion,
cyclocross is a better way to get people excited about the sport when they get into it.
[music] Conor:
Manon, let's face it, if you're racing on the road, the calendar is just way way longer
than that of a cyclocross one. You have to stay relatively fit throughout most of the year,
you'll start racing in January and you'll finish in November.
Manon: Yes. Cyclocross on the other hand, what, they race for a few months in the winter and then
they're done. You can dust off your cyclocross bike in December, muck around in the mud for a
bit, and that's that. Conor: Jeremy,
he's had life easy, hasn't he? Manon: Yes, he has. I wish
I was a cyclocross rider. Conor: Turn up for a month,
do a race in Belgium, go home. Manon: Off-season for the rest of the year.
Conor: Yes. Manon: Dream.
Jeremy: Yes, Conor, the road season is super long, I'll give you that. I decided to run some
statistics and I used you as the person who I ran them on. I did your last two seasons as a road pro
and you did 74 and 49 race days respectively. That's a lot of racing. Then I took the rider
who you mentioned earlier, Mathieu van der Poel and I looked at what he did last season and he
did 68 days of racing. He did 12 on the mountain bike, 25 in cyclocross, and then 31 on the road.
He also raced about 10 months of the season. [music]
Conor: On the road, you need to be way more concerned with your power to weight,
that means you need to stay on top of things and be pretty strict when it
comes to your time away from the bike. Manon: Fail to climb well on the road,
and no matter who you are, you're going to have an incredibly tough time. Cyclocross,
on the other hand, is more about the intensity and the power, meaning that you can get away with
carrying a few extra kilos and enjoying the time off the bike. It's less of a monk's life.
Conor: Yes, if you want to be on top form on the road,
you need to pay attention to so many different aspects. Cyclocross on the other hand, well,
you only really need a good sprint, don't you? Manon: Yes. It's just a bit of sprinting
in the mud, isn't it? Conor: Isn't that right, Jeremy?
Jeremy: Power to weight doesn't matter in cyclocross. Who are you kidding?
Power to weight absolutely matters. If you're carrying around an extra 3 kilograms or 3, 4,
5 extra pounds and you've got a cyclocross course where you're going down to zero speed and then
sprinting back up, then you'd be carrying a couple of extra pounds every single time you sprint. Over
the entire duration of a cross race, that's like 80 times over the course of an hour, so power to
weight doesn't matter in the same way that goes up Alpe d'Huez does, but it certainly does.
I'd even argue that a cyclocrosser's diet has to be more strict than a road rider's because, yes,
we're doing less volume, it's colder out, there's less time to ride, less daylight, and all that.
You got to be serious about your diet, you can't be going out there with that extra weight, so
I'd even argue that you have to be more strict because you're burning less calories
overall as your output day-to-day. I could go on about the reasons why
I think cyclocross is harder than road. There's the gym work, the running, the multiple bikes,
individual sport versus team-- Sorry. Road racing, though, is also super hard and
all jokes aside, I have a lot of appreciation. Having been on the road for 10 years as a pro,
I know how hard road racing can be too, but it's not up to us, it's up to you guys. Let
us know down in the comments which one you think is harder and why. Be nice and
I'll be reading the comments. [00:08:53] [END OF AUDIO]