Quoted message said:Buy Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyres, unrivalled master of puncture
resistance. My family have rode 4 sets simultaneously. I use to get on
average 4 puncures a years. Since buying the first set, i've had just
one puncture in nearly two years and over 10 thousand miles. The
puncture i did have, only went down when i left it over night. When i
found the culprit, it was a 12mm thorn that seemed as hard as carbide
and had worked its way in at the very side of the kevlar belt(i.e gone
round it). To be honest this was an extremely unlucky and unusual
puncture, so i consider that the Marathons have avoided all usual
causes of flat tyres. Not only that, but i think Schwalbe will go out
of business. The original workhorse bike still has the same set on
after around 10 thousand miles and they have NO , yes NO perceptible
wear to the tread. I figure with normal use ( 100 to 200 miles per
week on **** roads, they could last upto 5 years per set. Experience
tells me that if Schwalbe wants to keep their sales, they'll have to
reduce the longevity of the tyre. Awesome tyres!
Cheers, Nick.
So long as we're singing the praises of Schwalbe Marathon, I like a
different one (schwalbetires.com): the Marathon Racer. It's not so
puncture resistant as Marathon Plus is touted to be, but way more so
than "normal", road bike tires, while offering a very "road bike tire"
feel. They won't resist thorns or big shards of glass, but will
probably dispense with 99% of the suspect stuff.
I just recently discovered Schwalbe's new Marathon Racer 700x30,
although only Peter White seems to carry it in the U.S. I was looking
for the biggest cushiest tire to fit in my older (Gitane Tour de
France) frame (with plenty of clearance to the seat tube/front
derailleur), and it has maybe < 1mm from the campy centaur brake arms,
so for any road bike with sufficient clearance to the FD, this as
comfy as it gets. They're wide enough that I have to loosen the cable
adjustment to get them on and off the bike.
THey're beefy enough to afford running comfortably on finely gravelled
potholed dirt with as little as 50-60psi, but usually up to 75, and
I've put on enough miles (although only in about 3 weeks) to know they
are WAY more durable than e.g. Conti 4-season or gatorskin 28's that
get eaten through pretty fast on dirt/log roads, and they're a lot
taller and wider and softer, but roll just as well on asphalt. They
have just enough tread to embolden me at 35mph on dirt with a lot of
last years fine gravel still present, with the front end just sort of
floating downhill through the stuff, and I boldly ride through fine
glass on the asphalt shoulder with no concern. And at 370gm, they
feel much more like road tires than MTB. I hardly notice I'm not
running std 25c road tires on asphalt.
In fact I like 'em so much, and the dirt experience on a fast road
bike (as opposed to the drugery of MTB on the road) that I was finally
pushed over the line keeping me from a cross bike and picked up a new
frame, which they're pretty much giving away on ebay these days.
First tire on the cross bike: 700x35m Marathon Racer.
Bill Westphal
