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Old 03-24-20, 02:17 AM
  #25  
SethAZ 
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Originally Posted by ChrisAlbertson
Why are people saying to buy a bike with 32mm tires when the OP already has a really nice hybrid bike that could be used for gravel roads and such. He said he wants a "road bike" and we assume he keeps the hybrid.
Because 32mm is quite awesome on a road bike. I've got them on mine, and it's not meant as a gravel bike at all, though it would be fine I suppose with different tires. There are some really great road tires in that size that feel and handle great, and on normal, non-perfect pavement don't cost any performance worth even thinking about. They are from Compass (now Rene Herse), have a very supple casing, weight just barely more than a normal 28mm, and the road feel with it's dampening due to lower pressure are fantastic. This isn't confirmation bias; at the time I switched to the 32mm tires I had dozens of rides on a certain 32-mile route I did a lot on my 25 and 28mm tires, and further rides with the 32mm tires showed no loss of performance; if anything, I sped up. These were recorded rides reviewed on Strava, with actual performance data attached.

Hopefully after you have a proper road bike you get hooked and start doing 4 hour then later all day rides and cover some miles.
And this is yet one more reason to ride a good quality 32mm tire on the road bike if it will fit. The ride is smoother, less vibration, and for those really long rides like you suggest it actually matters. For one it's less fatiguing.

No matter what people say about big tires and comfort, When you have 100+ PSI in small tires the bike will roll really fast if the pavement is smooth. If you have good roads that are well surfaced then you can bump the pressure way up and you wil go noticably faster. So listen to advice on tires but ALSO look at where you intend to ride.
If one rides on purely pristine virgin asphalt roads then OK, but on normal roads in the real world those narrower tires with the higher pressure will jiggle you, the rider, more. Every joule of energy that it takes to jiggle you and the bike had to come from your legs. It's known as suspension losses. The lower-pressure, wider tire jiggles you and the bike less, so you lose less energy on less-than-perfect road surfaces.

There are several short stretches of road that I ride on often that are obscenely bad, as in massive cracks that gape multiple inches apart, and lots of road surface where the asphalt is cracked and broken but the chunks are still there, so its uber rough. On my 25mm tires I had to slow down noticeably on that road. With the 32mm tires I can ride more or less at full speed, so large is the difference in how the bike (and my butt) react to the rough road surface. Btw, I am a very heavy cyclist (well into the clydesdale category), and I ride my 32mm tires at 90psi rear and 85psi front. Lighter people get away with substantially less than that.
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