Reply to Can we do the KT with Road Bikes?

My wife and I have been training for a century for Team in Training. We have been doing 40-60 miles at a time, but all on the road. We want to do the KT but reading some of the comments here, it appears we may not want to attempt the trail from St. Charles to Hermann with road bikes. Can anyone recommend from experience what they would do in order to enjoy the trail on road bikes?

You should be fine on the road bikes, some friends and I rode from Washington to Sedalia on our road bikes without any problems. We did use 700x25 tires though.

Last year in September my wife and I did the Katy Trail from St. Charles to Clinton. We used our road bikes with saddle bags and supplies for 5 days, this year on Oct l- 6th we are doing it again from Clinton to St. Charles. I would suggest mountain bikes, I had several flats because of the tires on the road bikes, also we did run into some soft trails by Boonville and regreted not having the mountain bikes. This year we are using mountain bikes, also we feel they are more stable with heavy saddle bags on both sides. Either way, the ride is great, the trail is the best and the sites are very enjoyable. Good luck.

Hello Jim, a couple of friends any myself did a 175 mile ride and we were all using roadies. Besided 1 flat tire it worked out extremely well. I would suggest getting a good pair of Thorn Resistant tubes like the Slime tubes and running nothing smaller than a 700x25 tire which is what we were all using. It even rained almost the entire first day of our ride and we had no problems with the skinny slicks. I always hear people talk on here like they sink to their hubs or something crazy like that on the trail but I can tell you from an all day slow soaking rain, we didn't experience anything like that. I had a seatpost rack with a big trunk bag ontop of it and a friend of mine had full paniers completely loaded on his. Yes the bikes seem more unstable with that weight on the rear compared to that set-up on a heavy mtn bike frame, but it never posed a problem. I would definately recommend using your roadies for the trail, espcially if you are like me and just find yourself more comfortable on it. Then if you decide to bike off the trail in the towns and such, you have the perfect set-up to do so. We bikes all over the town of Hermann and New Franklin and rididng those miles on the road just looking around was really nice to have our roadies. Hope this was helpful and enjoy your ride!!