The Gravel Bike I've Been Waiting For: Obed GVR First Ride
There's nothing better than new bike day, and it tastes even sweeter when you've been waiting over a year for it! I got a sneak preview of the all-new second-generation GVR last season. Ever since, I've been counting down the days until mine finally showed up at my door.
That day has come, and I wasted zero time getting my new bike dirty on some local singletrack and my favorite gravel climb to see what it's really made of:
GVR First Impressions: Light, Snappy, and Confident
I ordered my size Small GVR in Obed's new Moongem paint color with the Parallax scheme, which adds a rugged black undercarriage. My bike with a SRAM Red XPLR build and carbon wheels weighs in at 19.2 lbs with the pedals, cages, and my Garmin mount installed. This makes it the lightest gravel bike I've ever owned! F
or reference, my last three carbon gravel bikes (a Lauf Seigla, a 3T Exploro, and a Cannondale SuperX) were all heavier, with the SuperX being the closest competitor. The frame itself is one of the lightest in class at 951 grams for a fully painted size Medium. My size Small is even lighter.
You can feel the weight savings immediately on the trail. This bike feels snappy whenever the terrain demands a burst of speed. You stamp on the pedals, and the bike leaps forward with instant acceleration. Exactly what you want from a good race bike! The way it changes direction feels telepathic too. I was weaving in between rocks and flicking the bike into chicanes.
Ultimately, the ride characteristic that really stuck out to me was confidence. I immediately felt at home and started pushing the bike downhill. I was skipping across rocks, leaning hard into corners, and letting off the brakes. The tires hooked up, and I entered the flow state. This is exactly what I love about riding gravel bikes.
Going Big: 2.2" Mountain Bike Tires on a Gravel Frame
For this build, I ordered a set of 2.2" Continental Dubnital mountain bike tires mounted to HED's Stillwater G50 aero gravel wheels. Running the tires at around 21 PSI front and 22 PSI rear, the GVR soaked up chunky singletrack, even without my beloved gravel suspension fork. I've been running some version of a gravel suspension fork for the last four years (most recently a Cane Creek Invert), so going fully rigid again was a small experiment. The tire volume did a lot of the work that suspension usually does for me, and I came away impressed with how much chatter it filtered out on its own.
The GVR's geometry is also built to take advantage of that extra tire volume. It's longer and slacker than the previous generation GVR, with a fork that has more rake than usual at 53mm. The geometry and tires are the key reason the bike felt so confidence-inspiring from the first descent.
I also love the absence of toe overlap. Toe overlap is a small but annoying problem I've dealt with on every size small road and gravel bike I've ever owned. With the longer front end and the added rake pushing the front wheel further away, I never had to think about timing my pedal stroke through tight, technical turns, which was a nice bonus.
The Holy Trinity of Gravel Performance
When I started at Obed, one of my first projects was answering a simple question: what actually makes a gravel bike fast? My answer came down to three things: tire clearance, aerodynamics, and weight. I like to think of this as the "holy trinity" of gravel performance, and the GVR was built around maximizing these three elements.
Tire clearance is obvious. The GVR needed to clear 2.2" MTB tires with room to spare. The aerodynamics show up in the frame shaping. The new Obed Race Fork uses deep airfoil-shaped legs that are set wide apart for cleaner airflow, and a deeper, wider truncated airfoil down tube that is designed to work with wider gravel tires. Can I actually feel the aero gains out on a ride? Probably not in any way I could point to. But the weight I can definitely feel every time I get out of the saddle and hammer uphill.
My Obed GVR Build
- Frame: Obed GVR - size Small in Moogem Parallax
- Fork: Obed Race Fork
- Groupset: SRAM Red XPLR E1, 40t, 165mm cranks
- Handlebar: FSA K-Force AGX - 40cm
- Stem: FSA SMR II - 100mm
- Seatpost: FSA SL-K
- Saddle: Wove Mags
- Wheels: HED Stillwater G50
- Tires: Continental Dubnital Race -2.2"
- Pedals: Wolf Tooth Del
A few new goodies made it onto this build. I'm testing an ultra-light Wove Mags saddle for the first time, along with Wolf Tooth DEL gravel race pedals. These pedals are single-sided, so they took a little getting used to when clipping in!
The feature I'm most excited about, though, might be the extra storage mounts inside the main triangle. They let me run a OneUp EDC pump inside the front triangle. The pump is neatly tucked out of the wind, and it completely replaces my saddle bag since it holds a multi-tool, tire plug kit, chain breaker, spare quick link, and a CO2 head.
Drivetrain-wise, I'm sticking with the same 13-speed SRAM Red XPLR setup I've run for the last two seasons, but with two key changes: 165mm cranks (a switch I'm making across all my bikes) and a smaller 40-tooth chainring, sent my way by Obed's VP after he watched me implode on a big climb in my last race.
Obed is all about helping riders get the bike they want, and items like my 40cm bars, HED Stillwater G50 wheels, and 165mm cranks are examples of components that can be requested through Obed's component request box in the custom bike builder. Or you can always reach out to the Obed team to get your GVR built exactly how you want it. Other things I asked for were "moto" brake routing and a pre-cut steerer with no spacers.
What's Next for My GVR?
This ride was just enough to get a feel for the bike before a bigger test. I'm heading to Nebraska in a few days for Gravel Worlds, and I'll be racing the 150-mile course on my new GVR. The next time I write about this bike, it'll hopefully be with a finish line behind me!