Schwalbe G-one Pros

 If anyone reads this they might notice I go through a lot of tires. That will happen when you ride a lot and have a lot of bikes. I counted how many i bought last year and it was... a lot.

The other thing people may notice is how much attention there is to rolling resistance right now. It kind of started with bicyclerollingresistance.com, and now there are a number of folks out there doing testing on real roads, which is nice as the smooth roller doesn't always tell the full story especially when it comes to gravel and mtb tires on rougher surfaces. The most recent real world testing is indicating that as roughness of the surface increases, the faster wider tires become. And on smoother surfaces, many wide tires are still fast. Conclusion? Probably that you should ride as wide of tires as possible unless you're only ever on very smooth paved roads (and even then, bigger road tires are nice).

So, last year when I got my orbea that had more tire clearance than a CX bike of old, I started off with 40mm tires because I had them. Then, in the summer when those needed replacement I went to 45s. Then, this spring when it was time for a new set i tried some 50mm schwalbes. My frame officially only has clearance for a 48mm measured width but in my experience the schwables tend to be a bit small or at least not bigger than advertised so I thought I should give it a try.

My choice - the new G one pro tires, with a semi-slick RS rear and the R up front for a little more braking and cornering grip.

They measure about 50.5mm and it's a pretty close fit

Don't think I could pull off a 2.1 thunder burt or anything even slightly larger. I put some foil tape in the chainstays and I have already noticed spots where it's got some wear from rocks and dirt getting in there.

So, how do they ride? Pretty good. I've been going with about 23/25psi f/r, which is around the same or a bit less than my getaways (which measured 48mm). I did not put inserts in them because it seemed less necessary with the added volume. Last week I did quite a bit of extended gravel descending, first down allen creek road to turah. The last time I rode it on 40s my hands were numb at the bottom and I had to take a break and shake them out a bit. Last week it felt pretty good. Yesterday we rode up deer creek, down little park creek, and then over holloman saddle, then back on crystal creek. Nowhere did I think "gee I wish I had narrower tires."

Grip is pretty good but the rear will slide around a bit on hard braking. The edge knobs bite pretty good though, and you do get used to riding a file tread type tire and learning that the grip is better when they're leaned over.

Durability is questionable, but good so far in the real world over rocks and stuff. However I got a silly puncture at slow speed on the kim willaims trail, presumably from a piece of glass or something that needed to be plugged and now I need to go patch the inside of the tire. They do not have the best puncture protection rating but they are fast and comfy.

Treadwear is also already noticable on the rear after only 300mi so I might be going through a couple of these this summer. Schwalbe does make 3 versions with differing tread so there are many possible combinations of tire, from the RS front and rear to the more aggressive RX, and they all test fast on bicycle rolling resistance and in the real world.

I guess the real conclusion is that big tires are absolutely the way to go for gravel and trails. It surprises me to see new gravel race bikes being released that only fit 45s. Basically, IMO if you put out a new bike it better fit 2.2s.