Originally Posted by
Riveting
So you recommend a newbie indoor rider to buy an entire wheel, cassette, and tire, on top of performing the wheel swapping process (potentially every other day) if they ride indoors and outdoors frequently in the same week, just to avoid some extra wear on a tire? IMHO, just use the same wheel and tire, it's just a whole lot easier overall, even if it is marginally more expensive due to extra tire wear.
I've never seen the data, but how many less miles do you think you'd get from a tire on a trainer compared to riding that same tire outdoors? How many miles would it take on the special trainer wheel to see a return on the cost of that entire trainer wheel (ROI)? I'm guessing it takes MANY more miles than the OP is ever going to ride, maybe 5,000-10,000 miles? I've had a smart trainer since 2013, and never went through a tire riding indoors over the winter. But I have gone through 3-4 rear tires in a single season of outdoor riding (8,500 miles that year).
I once bought a trainer specific tire due to me thinking (and being told) that it was going to be quieter and less vibration on the wooden floor beneath the trainer. It wasn't. That tire is just hanging on the wall now, just in case I need it in an emergency.
The OP says he has a spare 10-speed wheel. The debate is not whether it's worth buying a new wheel, it's whether or not to set the 10-s wheel up as his trainer wheel. This would involve installing an 11-spd cassette on the 10spd wheel. As many people have pointed out, rather than spending on a marketed "trainer tire," he can just use old worn tires.
Many of us who have wheel-on trainers have found that the trainer wears through our tires quicker than road riding, and as such it's a smart enough option, if it's available, to have a spare wheel, with a tire you don't care about, to put on the bike when setting it up on the trainer. In my n=1 days, I did have multiple back-tire flats which could be attributed to wear due to the trainer. I wore through good Conti tires in significantly less time when using them on the trainer and road. Some posters on this forum have upgraded their wheelsets, and kept the old/stock wheels to use specifically as a trainer/spare rear wheel.
My trainer bike is my CAAD10, which is also my spare bike. I keep it on the trainer, with the spare wheel on it, and the road wheel next to it. When I need/choose to ride the CAAD, I take it off the trainer, swap the rear wheels, and off I go. In the grand scheme of pre-ride faffing, I typically spend more time looking for sunglasses, filling a water bottle, pumping tires, deciding how many layers to wear etc than I do swapping the back wheel.