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It's been a bad year for me so far. I've trashed three, relatively new tyres since Christmas and, most recently, two in the last three weeks - one Schwalbe Pro One on my son's bike and one Conti GP5000 on my bike - both getting sliced to the point where they are starting to split the carcass and have had to be retired. The latest 25mm GP5000 was literally two weeks old, so I'm properly annoyed by this! Oddly, the 28mm GP5000s I used through the winter are almost unmarked despite many hundreds of grim, winter miles.
I've used GP4000 and, latterly, GP5000 for years without issue and as I like riding on them, I've never given a lot of thought to the cost. If you only replace them when worn out, in the larger scheme of things, it doesn't really matter if a tyre costs £20 or £40. But at the rate I'm going through them this year, I'm starting to wonder if I should be changing tyres to a different make / model to save a few quid!
So, STW, what skinny tyres do you run on your road bikes? Any experience or suggestions that might make my life less pained, and my wife less grumpy about the credit card bill?
I'm on 35c Schwalbe G-One Speeds - Can't remember the last time i sliced a tyre, if ever!
They are on a Reilly Spectre so plenty of clearance which may not be the case for you?
Any reason for using 25/28mm tyres or can you go wider?
It's generally just bad luck if you slice a tyre and whatever has caused it will most likely have done the same to whichever tyre you were running. My 2000km old GP5000TL are unmarked, I've written a GP4season off on the first ride.
I would put it down to bad luck, I've been running continentals for years and only had one puncture
25c Clement LGG on fixie commuter and 23c vredestien fiamente on road bike commuter. The vredestiens are really hard to spell and look as though they are falling apart with big gaps between the different tyre materials but they seem to hold together and ride quite nicely.
Any reason for using 25/28mm tyres or can you go wider?
Clearance and rim width, also 35mm would be a bit wide for the sort of riding I do, although I do switch between 25 and 28 depending on what I'm up to. I've got some 35mm G-One Allrounds on the gravel bike and really rate them, although I have sliced one of those up albeit some time ago.
Oh well, I guess I'll just grit my teeth and pony up for yet another pair of GP5000s, so I can stick one in the garage drawer for stock on the basis that if I have this, I won't ever need to use it 🙂