As a regular cyclist, beginners often ask me on what the best upgrade is to make to a cycle. One can approach this question from various angles, and I am not going to do that. I have a simple answer to that question – get puncture-resistant tires.
There, that’s it. My advice is to get good tires. Nothing will improve your cycling experience more than this one upgrade.
There are many terrible things that can happen on a ride – some dangerous, others not so much. But nothing is as demoralizing as having a puncture on a long ride when you are far from home. No matter how good you are at it, fixing a puncture will take you the better part of a half hour. In that time, you would have lost all interest in the ride.
In general, cyclists are very lovely people. So there have been instances of riders missing out on completing a brevet because they helped another rider with a puncture. Any other mechanical fault and the rider would have DNF’ed. But a puncture is a strange thing. You know you can get it fixed. Your fellow riders know they can help you. All it does is ruin everybody’s flow.
Get yourself puncture-resistant tires before any other upgrade to your cycle.
I use the Continental Gatorskin on one cycle and Schwalbe Durano DD on the other. Both of them are 28C tires with reasonably low rolling resistance. They typically last me between 10000 and 12000 km without a puncture. For someone who doesn’t intend to compete in the Olympics, Tour de France, or any other race for that matter, these tires are great and give me the one thing I expect from them – puncture-free rides.
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