Quote:
Originally Posted by ox_rider
Hot bike, will you mostly ride gravel with this bike?
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80% urban / 20% gravel
The 35c makes cruising through most anything you could expect to encounter in urban environments pretty effortless. There's something that feels indestructible on medium width tires on 700c.
I rode for years on 23c, then 25c, and thought 28c was massive. Then I got a Kona Rove, and commuted on 32c, and liked that, my wheel / tire combo at that time were heavy and ponderous.
Getting the reasonably light Paselas on the Easton wheelset, which I built for the 28c Contis in one iteration, was a revelation.
I rode 38c Ramblers on gravel, which were quite good for 700c --- but then I tried 650b on my local roads. In my area, 'gravel' roads often are chunky crushed rock from logging trucks. For harder pack with loose small gravel over top, the 700c/38c+ combo would be the bees knees, and a bit faster.
I did try this... I actually was coasting along on my 700c / 38c wheelset, on a long converted train grade... switching a couple of weeks later to 650b, no coasting. Pretty unbelievable difference. Not sure I would have predicted this if asked previously.
Likely I will build a 650b wheel set for this exact bike for my off pavement excursions. The extra tire volume significantly improved the rougher terrain comfort.
Thanks for asking,
-R