Originally Posted by
elcruxio
Finally I was able to mount summer tires on my touring bike. I have Marathon Almotions standing by, and they are admittedly extremely supple and nice. However since our roads will remain coated with arrowheads some like to call pounded gravel for at least a month or more, I mounted marathon plusses. I don't know if it's the long winter with studded tires (which are actually quite supple) or something else, but the MP's aren't bad.
Sure they aren't as nice as the "road" tires on my allroad bike, but I wouldn't be the first to call them uncomfortable. In bigger bumps they could have a bit more flex (pressure dependent) but the puncture protection latex (that blue stuff you see inside) actually filters out a lot of the buzz of asphalt. I'd even go as far as to call them pretty smooth.
Also surprisingly the MP isn't actually that slow a tire according to rolling resistance testing. It's only around 10 watts less efficient that Bon Jon Pass, which is a very fast tire. But you get a lot of security for that 10 watts. My guess is that MP is as efficient as it is because of the puncture protection latex, which is really bouncy stuff.
My experience has also been that the stiff feeling of the MP is greatly lessened when the bike is loaded down with luggage.
The MP and the MPT uses a 5 mm thick Smart Guard layer
, which provides excellent puncture protection. This layer is made from a special rubber that includes a proportion of recycled rubber from old latex products, but it is not all latex, what the rest of the material used, or the percentage of latex product used in it is not disclosed.
My Almotion tires use the V guard liner, which is lighter in weight than the Race Guard liner ( not sure why the race guard is heavier, it should be the other way around), and they don't say what that's made of other than some sort of densely woven fiber, whatever it's made of it works. But like I mentioned before, I do cheat by using Clear Motion Rhinodillos liners. At the time the Almotion tires had the least rolling resistance of any touring type of tire, but they now they have a newer one called the Marathon Efficiency, this tire, according to Schwalbe, rolls a bit better than the Almotion and it's lighter in weight by about 100 grams, with the same flat protection as the Almotion. When my Almotion tires wear out I'll try those Efficiency tires unless something new and better comes along before that.
Neither the Efficiency nor the Almotion tires have the high flat resistance as the MP or the MPT has, but I wanted a faster rolling tire thus less energy being spent trying to pedal a 60 pound load around for a half a day. I had the Greenguard before, and those felt like a sluggish brick compared to the Almotion.