Tried and liked 2012
I poked around with a bunch of new things this last year and most of them worked out (or at least weren’t so horrible as to make me want to hurl them out the window,) but nothing was so immediately positive as trying Resist Nomad tires. The 35mm and 45mm versions are nice, but the 28 (29.5 on Open Sport/Archetype rims) mm ones are spectacularly nice – smooth riding, fast, grippy, and cheap. I’d tried some of the more blingy supple high-thread count tires out there (Challenge Parigi-Roubaix, which I found would roll basically forever, but paid for that by giving me flats about once every 60 miles, and Grand Bois Hetres, which converted the handling of Russell’s P/R into slush) and walked away unhappy with the harsh ride they gave me, and I’d been riding a pair of Rivendell Ruffy-Tuffy tires which were increasingly terrifying every time I traversed a gravel section, but none of them came even close to comparing to these tires.
The only tires I like anywhere close to these were Nashbar Duro 26mm, which, of course, are no longer made, and that’s why I’m stockpiling Nomads like they are going out of style.
When I compared the 45s vs the 35s on the project bike, the 45s seemed to roll more smoothly over debris, but accelerated much slower and became really exhausting to push along after 200 or so km. I’ve not yet compared 35s to 28s, but the midlifecrisismobile now has a low-trail fork with buckets of tire clearance (and linear-pull cantilevers instead of caliper brakes) so when I get the new rack finished I can do a proper comparison of them.
The only thing wrong with them is that I seem to pick up a flat every 500 miles or so, but I’ll put up with the flats as part of the package deal.