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I've noticed there's a large split between gravel bikes with a pretty big (in mtb terms) single front chain ring of around 40 tooth and a 29er-hardtail which is typically 30-32-ish, albeit slightly bigger tyre diameter.
Anyone who has done the Dirty Reiver on a 1x drivetrain 29er felt massively under-geared on the flat? Downhill i'm fairly happy to coast!
I'm actually currently running 30t + 11-36 cassette which I will probably replace with 32t + 11-42 cassette when it wears out.
Yep, i've looked at bikecalc.com, and i'm happy with my current gearing for general MTB riding, and also trying not to spend (too) much more gearing (SWIDT) up for a fairly one-off event!
Did it last year on a 32 front, there were one or two occasions where I would have made use of bigger but on balance I much preferred having the lower gears and the ability to spin up anything right to the end.
I agree with the above. You're unlikely to spin out a 30:11 gear. My low gear last year (2x drivetrain) was 34:32 and I could have done with bigger at the back for the long climbs, a 36 or 42 would have been nice.
basically, you'll be ok with what you have.
We did it on MTB 32 front and it was fine passed by CX bikes on the flat but we then passed a lot on the descents with 100 mm bounce on the front, if you are just going along for a day out you will be fine.
Cheers for these replies - reassuring and will save me some cash!