This spring I was looking for a replacement gravel tire for the Schwalbe G-one Rs that I ran last year. I did generally like those tires and would buy them again but there's so much out there I felt like trying something new. The schwalbes also seemed a little slow rolling so this time around I was going for speed. I did consider trying a g-one RS on the rear, and those do test real fast.
Anyway, with the shop having trek now and trek kind of pushing pirelli and having the race team use them I thought I'd try some out and ordered the Gravel H, for hardpack. There's also a M, for mixed, S, for soft, and RC, for "race" I guess.
Very low profile and tightly spaced center blocks, getting a little taller and more spread out as you go toward the edge knobs, which are low profile, but do exist.
These come in 35, 40, 45, and maybe 50mm, and black or tan. I got the 40s, and black because the black tires were listed as slightly lighter. Mine were like 485g which is not all that light, but when it comes to gravel tires I'm finding a little extra weight is worth the added durability. I also have vittoria air liners in there, plus a hookless "MTB" rim with pretty wide sidewalls to hopefully all help prevent flats. On the 23mm IW rims these come out way bigger than listed at just under 44mm. They just barely don't rub in the chainstays and leave no clearance for mud or an out of true wheel. I put some aluminum foil tape in the potential rub spots and so far it's staying pretty clean though.
The first test for these tires was day 2 of the montana gravel challenge, a loop that goes from ninemile toward town on mullan, then along the south side road to petty creek and back over to ninemile. So a good amount of pavement, not much for big climbs, and then 20 miles of pretty rough gravel road. This year we were flying and I was way on the back of the group after being in poor position at the start of the dirt climb toward deep creek and then after losing some more spots when i realized my brake hood was loose and slipping (I pulled out of the line and thought about trying to tighten it on the move and then just decided to ride the rest of the way in the drops). So I was back there, just having to stay on wheels, not getting a good view of line choice of what was coming, and being in all the chaos as people had flats or mechanicals or just got dropped. It was a long time before I actually felt like I was "in the group" and not just barely hanging on. We probably had 20+ in the front at the start and by the time we hit petty creek there were 8.
So the tires made it through. And they feel fast (and test fast), and are high volume that lets me run pretty low pressures. I've been doing like 32.34 in the front and 37-38 in the rear. The low pressure aids grip but they are really low profile and I guess we'll see how they go on drier and looser stuff. Liking them overall though. Be nice if they measured closer to listed as my major jake doesn't have the best clearance.
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