Your bike tires are too skinny. Driving with fat, supple tires is simply better

Some months Back home, my friend and fellow bike enthusiast, Eric, prepared for his first 100-mile bike ride. Worried about the pain he would feel afterwards, he wondered what he could do to improve his driving.

As a convert to the Church of the Big Tires, I was excited to share with him an idea I had learned from other cyclists: Fit the largest floppy sidewall tires that fit your bike, then inflate them to a pressure that will seem surprisingly low..

I’ve been a volunteer bike mechanic in Seattle for almost 10 years and have slowly modified my own mid-range Peugeot 1988 into something modern and capable. Yet nothing prepared me for the impact of large tires with soft (i.e. “soft”) sidewalls and inflating them to a much lower pressure than I was used to. I remember my amazement going down a big hill, hearing the different sound of my tires, and experiencing the safe, solid feeling the bike suddenly had. It was grippier, more comfortable, less twitchy and maybe even faster. In car terms, it was like going from a well-maintained old Camry to a modern sport truck. It was exhilarating.

“Tires are probably the most important part of your bike and the only part that touches the ground,” says Russ Roca, who has 175,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, The Path Less Pedaled, which focuses on pleasure rather than speed and generally puts bikes first. which can ride on gravel as well as pavement. “A wider tire means more volume and integrated suspension. This makes the motorcycle more stable.

Roca says wider tires are simply more fun. “You’re not shaken to death. You’re not bouncing off every rock and pothole. This is the most visible improvement you can make to your bike.”

It made sense, and I was learning that not having my wrists and butt shake helped keep them from being sore on long rides.

Yet somehow the big tires still seem to be a secret. We cyclists put pads in our shorts and buy heavy suspension systems for off-road bikes, but we are somehow reluctant to experiment with the part of the bike that actually touches the road to make the ride more enjoyable. Major global bike brands still seem unsure about embracing this trend, perhaps trying to ensure you buy a slimmer road bike and a gravel bike with wider tires instead of a ” off-road” that can do both.

“Cycling has a lot of tradition, and sometimes we do things because they’ve always been done that way,” Roca explains. “The industry says lighter is synonymous with goodwhich is easy to explain and market, but selling on ride feel and soft tires is more amorphous.

Additionally, wide tires are relatively new to the market. Models with soft sidewalls made with a high thread count fabric and a layer of rubber thick enough to protect the weave but thin enough to allow the tire to be sufficiently flexible have only become widely available in the last decade. Add to that a pandemic and an industry that has long inventories, and you can see why adoption hasn’t been widespread.

Behind the reluctance of buyers is the belief that a wider, softer tire is slower than a skinny tire at high pressure, that a larger tire weighs more and has more rolling resistance. But it’s not always the case.

Last year I celebrated a milestone birthday and bought myself a fancy new dirt bike from Rivendell Bicycle Works. It accommodates tires with a width of 40 millimeters. (I’m currently using 38s.) The frame is steel and the bike isn’t particularly light, but I like the way it feels and the way it encourages me to ride as much as possible and fast. This is largely due to the tires.

Toward the end of a summer when I was riding a lot, I found myself at a red light next to a spandex-clad rider on a skinny-tire bike. When the light turned green, he ran away and I thought: What the hell.