DYLAN JOHNSON'S TALKS TYRES | RDMN CLIPS

1.Gravel tire choice and sizing trends

You're kind of a self-proclaimed and if you go onto your YouTube channel there's so many good videos on torchoice Taurus always and it seems to be a conversation that I had Sophia Gomez on couple of weeks ago and said it's just like every week people like water is using today whatever is he using today yeah what's the considerations when someone because we're kind of getting over in Europe and you know I'm aware that we have like even 40 of our listeners of us as well so it's coming into gravel season right now it's not started in quite a few places when someone's looking at their event and they're thinking to themselves okay what tires should I choose for this event what considerations are you taking into mind yeah I mean there's all the typical ones how much how much road is there how much gravel is there how chunky is the gravel you know client how much climbing how much descending is there single track all of that but I'm going to be honest I think that the industry in general has gravel tire size wrong right now uh and I'm gonna I'm gonna be referencing what how how mountain biking and Road cycling has come a long way in their tires in the past past few years you know 20 years ago Roadies were on what 20 millimeter tires what what were you on when you were racing with a 19 on the front on a 21 on the back and that's like the idea then like you mixed up these Tire choices well 21 to 23 was pretty standard for criteriums yeah always 140 PSI like you didn't even question that always 140 PSI yep so so now look where the world tour teams are at now I mean a lot of summer a lot of them are on 28s now and they're running what 70 PSI um so it it's quite quite a bit different on the mountain bike side you know guys used to run 1.9 2.0 tires now uh you know now Nino's only on 2.4 is like that's all he runs so you know tires in both mountain bike and Road have just gotten wider and wider and wider and it's because it's faster um and I think that we're just going to see the same thing happen in gravel gravel tires are gonna get wider and wider and wider and it's because it's faster and and this isn't that hard to test I I don't know why more people don't do this all you have to do is go to a section of gravel write it at a certain power output switch you know switch tires ride it at the same power output and then you'll be surprised by how much faster you go when you put the wider tires on this blows people's mind when I tell them this but but these homemade tests are unbelievable I was getting into time trotting back in the day when I was trying to make my way through cycling and you know as Coleman tree was a broke student so I had very little cash definitely wind tunnel testing it's not very accessible now it was a lot less accessible like seven eight nine years ago I just got a bunch of TT helmets from all my friends went up to the top of an incline locked myself into position got a push star for my body in helmet a marked it with chalk down the bottom where I stopped rolling came back up same position same push Mark it in shock with helmet be it's pretty rudimentary but you can draw some conclusions from that I'm not I'm not saying like I'm not saying this is perfect science by any means that's not what I'm saying I'm just saying if you want if you want to have a rough idea of whether something is faster or slower you know you can test it you don't just have to you don't just have to guess or just look at what the competition is running I think what most people do is they just look at what the competition is running and say okay I'll run the same thing because they must be right but so there's so many buckets there you're talking about you know the percentage of tarmac versus gravo how did how technical it is or in terms of how sharp it is puncture resistance doesn't need solid wall puncture resistance do these Tire choices then fall into a number of buckets for you that you have two or three go to Tar choices or you literally playing with 15 or 20 different horror Choice options um I have a favorite gravel Tire right now that I use for the vast majority of gravel races I won't use it for every single gravel race but my go-to tire is the specialized Pathfinder Pro and they just started making it in a 47 millimeter and that's what I've been running uh it's probably what I'll run for 85 of the gravel races I do this year and then for some of the other races that maybe have more Road uh I might run the challenge strata Bianchi um in the 40 millimeter because it's quite a fast tire but it punctures easy um so I I don't have I don't have 20 different tires I'm choosing from but I I it's more that I have a a select few that I really like and I don't have a tire sponsor by the way so so I I try a bunch of different tires and I will give you my honest opinion on them is there a big advantage to not having a Thor sponsor yeah the big Advantage is that you can run the best tire I actually kind of feel bad for certain riders that have certain Tire sponsors to be honest with you because it seems to me that there are some companies that are really nailing it on their mountain bike tire and really dropping the ball on their gravel tire and then vice versa there's some companies that are nailing it on the gravel dropping the ball on the mountain bike the lifetime Grand Prix has both mountain bike and gravel and I you know some writers I just I just feel bad for them that they have to run these certain tires for certain races so your Pathfinder say for under 44 is your go-to 47 40 47. so you're Embrace this white already I I I test I I test this I test this and it's faster and that blows people's mind when you when you tell them 47 it blows their mind they're like there's no way that's faster there's no way that's faster try it for yourself if you enjoyed this little clip from the podcast you can check out full episodes of the podcast on any podcast platform Apple Spotify or whoever you get 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