I’ve yet to ride a carbon frame for any amount of real distance, so idk how good they actually are.
But having a less harsh ride can also be archived by not using the thinnest pizza cutter tires at 10 bar. Especially if we care about time ridden and not avg. speed.
And it’s going to be slightly harder to get the same speed out of comfy tires, so that’s also more exercise.
It was really funny about a decade back watching the entire bike industry all at once acknowledge friction coefficients, and suddenly the tires all went from 24mm/90psi to 38mm/40psi. All because the roadies started riding on gravel.
You could argue that TPI tubes / tubeless made larger road tires practical. But we all secretly know it was because people at the time just thought thin tires looked cooler and “more aero”.
I’ve yet to ride a carbon frame for any amount of real distance, so idk how good they actually are.
But having a less harsh ride can also be archived by not using the thinnest pizza cutter tires at 10 bar. Especially if we care about time ridden and not avg. speed.
And it’s going to be slightly harder to get the same speed out of comfy tires, so that’s also more exercise.
It was really funny about a decade back watching the entire bike industry all at once acknowledge friction coefficients, and suddenly the tires all went from 24mm/90psi to 38mm/40psi. All because the roadies started riding on gravel.
You could argue that TPI tubes / tubeless made larger road tires practical. But we all secretly know it was because people at the time just thought thin tires looked cooler and “more aero”.