Two unhappy discoveries regarding Parigi-Roubaix tires
- They don’t have antipuncture strips, which is not surprising, and they’re nice and wide. So today, after maybe 25 miles of riding on them, I ran over something sharp which ran through the front tire, punched a hole in the tube, then appears to have fallen out, which led to the second discovery of the day…
- Which is that, sadly, they ride terribly when they’re at low pressure. The flat I had today (at ~5:30pm, in the dark & rain, on the Springwater Trail) happened far enough away from home that I just swapped tubes with a new one, which I then pumped up to 25-30 pounds before riding home. That was a very long 2.5 miles, because I felt every bump and irregularity on the road more than I did when the tire was pumped up to 100psi.
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The only annoying thing about the flat (aside from it being dark and rainy) was that it happened on a stretch of the road that was up on an embankment, so I had to walk about half a mile before there was enough shoulder to lay the bicycle down out of the way of traffic (the Springwater Trail is a major commuter route, so there’s a lot of traffic during rush hour.)
The poor ride quality on low pressure was, on the other hand, really annoying because I’ve grown used to just pumping the tires up enough to keep them from bottoming out, then continuing on my way and fully pumping them up when I get home (that’s pretty much what happened on the Oregon Coast 600 last year; I got a wire in the front wheel just east of Lincoln City and – after I noticed the tire was getting low 50km down the line – rode the last 250km on 50-30psi.) So it’s sad to not be able to do that with these tires.
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Well, all flats suck but that one sounds especially sucky.
I think the wee Lyzene Road Drive pumps are pretty good, especially for being tiny. It isn’t fun to get tires up to 100 psi with them, but it is a reasonably practical endeavor. (I don’t have much choice; if I try to ride with tires much under 60psi, I get pinch flats.)
I use the Lyzene Micro-floor Drive most of the time, because I’ve got a whole rack bag full of a paranoid-person level of parts and tools and it fits no problem, and while it’s not really a floor pump it’s in an excellent place in the portability/utility curve.
If the Lyzene web site hadn’t been designed for twitchy marmosets with hallucinogen addictions, I’d provide links.