The Skinny

Over the last six years the vast majority of my rides have occurred on plus tires, either on one of my two Jones bikes (3.0") or my Salsa Timberjack mountain bike (2.8").

My gravel bike saw little use while I was inFATuated with big tires. Mostly it was relegated to indoor use on the stationary trainer in bad weather. I was pretty content riding slower with the big tires and being more comfortable with the upright position the Jones bikes gave me. I also lived in the foothills surrounded by rocky trails, so the Jones bikes were perfect.

When I acquired the Wolverine in January, I started to mix in a little gravel riding here and there when I wasn't riding with Jennifer (who also rides a Jones). The Wolverine fits me really well and the position is much more comfortable than my other gravel bike. I found that the 55mm tires were a pretty damn perfect compromise for mixed surface riding around my new home area. The bike opened up a fresh way to approach the rides around here that were starting to bore me. It was fun to go fast again.

Then a couple months ago, Jennifer broke her foot. During her recovery I shifted to riding the gravel bikes almost exclusively. As I jumped back and forth between the two bikes, one running 45mm tires and the other 55mm tires, I thought a lot about tires and how far we have come since I first stared riding over 40 years ago.

♦♦♦

My first mountain bike was a 1984 Ross Mt. Whitney. It was a pretty good starter bike and the gateway to my lifelong passion for riding.

At this point in our lives, my friends and I were transitioning from BMX to road bikes. After deciding to buy mountain bikes, we actually rode all three disciplines for a while. It was hard to completely leave BMX behind, but eventually we did as mountain bike fever took hold of us.

My Ross came with 2.125" Snake Belly tires. These tires were pretty common at the time for both BMX and mountain bikes. They looked like this:

This is a Panaracer reissue that stays true to the original.

You can see why they were called snake bellies.

The mountain bike guys simply borrowed the 26" version originally made for BMX cruisers. Here is Tom Ritchey rocking a pair of red snake bellies in 1981:

In BMX we basically had two tires sizes to choose from: 1.75" and 2.125" (not counting sew-ups and speed rims). In our circle the use cases were pretty clear. We used 2.125 for general riding (jumping!) and 1.75 for racing. There was no way you would run 2.125" tires in a BMX race because they were noticeably slower.

My buddy Steve catching air.

That same mentality prevailed when we decided to race mountain bikes in 1985. We believed that 2.125 inch tires were simply too wide for racing. We weren't the only ones. The 1984 Stumpjumper Team, a purpose build racing bike, came with tiny 1.5 inch Tricross tires.

If they were good enough for the Specialized pros, they were good enough for us. Here we are rocking 1.5 inch tires at our first race:

Doug and I unloading our bikes at Sly Park.

My second race was the 1985 Rockhopper. Those tires are narrow!

Yes, my handlebars are bent.

My fourth race:

Looks like I cut my bars down, which I don't remember doing.

We suffered our fair share of pinch flats that year, many of which could have been prevented with wider tires. But we survived.

By the next season I was on my new custom Ibis using 1.95" Ground Control tires, and they were a huge upgrade in every way.

RIP, Charlie.

I bring all this up because sometimes when I am riding my old gravel bike through a technical section, the 45mm tires can feel woefully inadequate and tiny. Obviously after looking down at a three-inch tire for so many years, a gravel tire is going to look small. And railing a corner with a gravel tire is going to feel a lot different and less secure than a big three-inch knobby.

However, it's all relative. When doing the math a 45mm tire measures out at 1.77 inches. It's funny to me that these gravel tires are significantly larger than my original 1.5" MTB racing tires in 1985. I look at 45mm now and think there's no way in hell I am racing on the Rubicon Trail with these tiny things. But we did. We raced the 1985 High Sierra Challenge on those tiny tires. Not coincidentally, I suffered a high-speed pinch flat on my front tire and hit a tree, resulting in my first racing concussion. (I repaired the flat and still finished the race.)

Thankfully tire technology has improved and science has proven that bigger is better, for the most part. Even road racers, who tend to cling tightly to the old ways, have finally embraced wider tires. Back in the 1980s we wanted the narrowest possible tires, as small as 19mm. We pumped them up to crazy pressures, as much as 120 PSI. They rode like crap and we flatted way too often. Over the years I moved to 23mm, 25mm and then 28mm tires on my road bikes.

My racing bike, late '90s to early 2000s.

Currently a 30-32mm tire is pretty standard in the UCI peloton with even wider choices for more technical races like the spring classics. Tadej Pogacar ran 35mm tires in the 2026 Paris-Roubaix. These measure out at 1.38 inches, not much smaller than my MTB racing tires back in 1985. Crazy.

The UCI rules for road tires are now based on total rim/tire diameter, not width. The cap is a 700mm total diameter. There are a lot of variables involved, but for the most part this limits tire width to about 39mm. The UCI is using a super sophisticated 3-D printed device to check tire width. Incidentally, 39mm is about 1.54 inches. My first MTB racing tires might just fit in the checking tool!

In my first year of cyclocross in 2002 I was running 30mm tires, which is on the low end of road racing standards now. However, the UCI is still enforcing a 33mm maximum for cyclocross, a rule that was in place back when I raced. Why would cyclocross tires be narrower than road racing tires?

I actually understand and endorse the logic here because the point of cyclocross is to test the skills of racers riding what is essentially a road bike on mixed terrain.

District Championships, 2002.

For cross country mountain bike racing, the current standard is about 2.4 inches. The Maxxis Aspen and Schwalbe Racing Ralph are pretty popular options. These dwarf anything we could even dream of in the '80s.

On the gravel side, it's not uncommon to see 2.2 inch tires on race bikes. Manufacturers are currently battling in an arms race to see who can cram the biggest tires into a frame and still provide short chainstays, chainring clearance and a narrow Q-factor. The new Crux 5:

The winner of Unbound this year was running two-inch tires.

I don't think the tire wars have been settled yet. Tires are still evolving and racers are pushing the envelope in an attempt to shave precious seconds from their times. The cycling disciplines are all cross-pollinating and stealing bits of technology from each other. The end result is fatter tires winning races.

Like it or not, these trends trickle down to the general public. You can't go into a bike shop and buy a road bike off the floor with 23mm tires and rim brakes. A typical road bike will be equipped with disk brakes and 32mm tires now.

I for one and happy that I can have my cake and eat it too. Tires now are amazing compared to what I started with so many years ago—light, fast, supple, tubeless and wide. I am thankful to leave all the skinny in the past.

Later.

Pure

Our air hasn't been particularly great lately. As someone who is a little sensitive to particulate levels, I have to be careful, which has meant riding indoors a lot. Which sucks. This morning it looks like this:

Bad air in the winter is not something we deal with here. Yet here we are. I find myself saying "we've never" a lot lately when it comes to the weather and climate: We've never had rain like this. We've never seen wind speeds this high. We've never seen heat like this. On and on it goes. This time it's a high pressure system that is just sitting on top of us creating an inversion layer that does not allow particulates to escape. We've never seen this . . .

Yesterday, though, I caught a break and had some clean(er) air and blue(r) skies. I took the new Wolverine out for a mixed surface ride.

All told it was 24 miles and a little over half of it was on dirt.

I wore my new Duff Beer cycling cap for the first time. Sexy. As is the cap.

Hopefully this weird inversion layer situation lets up soon.

Later.

Commissioning a Symphony in C

Today I was trucking along on a quiet, smooth road when there was a loud bang and orange tire sealant spewing everywhere like a pinwheel firework.

I stopped and found a large, C-shaped cut in my rear tire.

There was no fixing it. I mean, I could have installed my spare tube if I had to, but I certainly didn't want to. It's a messy situation.

Jenn was about 30 minutes away at a yoga class. Luckily my son was still a few days from migrating back to SoCal for school, so he was available to come get me.

It's a bummer because the Panaracer GravelKing tire was very new. You can still see the nubs on the center tread. I have no idea what I hit, but it must have been something very sharp and cylindrical to make that cut. This is only the third tubeless failure in well over 10 years of tubeless use, so I can't be too mad.

Time to shop for a new tire. I will not get another GravelKing because they were not easy to seat due to the very loose bead. Hopefully there is a Maxxis tire that fits the bill because I like mounting those.

Later.

Get Shorty

As I advance in years, I am starting to think about ways to keep my body from falling apart. For the most part I feel pretty good when I ride mountain bikes, but the gravel bike does cause me to experience some minor hip issues. I attribute this to the more acute hip angle in the aero position. One way to increase this angle is with shorter cranks.

Over the years I have read many articles and studies related to crank length and how it applies to ergonomics, power and efficiency. For the most part the takeaway for power is this: It doesn't matter much. Power output stays pretty uniform except on the far ends of the spectrum, like with 120mm or 210mm cranks. Any lack of leverage with shorter cranks is made up by higher cadence, and vice versa.

As for efficiency, it depends. Tadej Pogačar started using 165mm cranks this year with the intent to spin more and stay seated more when climbing. We do know seated climbing is more efficient because it utilizes far fewer muscle groups, requiring less fuel and oxygen. I think maybe it worked for him. At the very least it didn't hinder him. Still, I saw Tadej attack many times this year out of the saddle, so I think this simply proves that shorter isn't necessarily better or worse, just different.

That's all great, but the facet I am most interested in is the ergonomic side. To me it makes sense that decreasing the movement in the knee and hip joints with a shorter crank could be beneficial. This of course comes with a price—more crank revolutions. Given that I have produced millions and millions of pedal revolutions in my life, I don't think a few more per ride will hurt me, especially if each of those comes with less joint movement.

Cranks in 175mm length have been my standard since BMX days, and I never felt the need to change. In 2021 when I bought the Jones LWB, it showed up with 170mm cranks. Jeff Jones specs shorter cranks because he likes lower bottom brackets, so for him it wasn't an ergonomic choice. My first instinct was to immediately replace the cranks, but I decided to try them. I felt the length difference immediately, but after a few rides I forgot they were any shorter. The LWB is by far the bike I ride the most, so you could say that I have mostly converted to 170mm cranks.

When I built the Santa Cruz Hightower in 2023, I used 170mm cranks because that's what the complete build used. Long travel means the bottom bracket will be low. Even with 170s, I experienced a lot of rock strikes, so I dropped down to 165mm cranks. I pretty much hated them. Combined with the ridiculously steep seat tube angle, the short cranks made me feel like I was directly over the bottom bracket, the sensation not completely unlike riding a unicycle.

There are many calculations floating around out there to determine your optimum crank length based on height, inseam or tibia length. I have seen mine as short as 162 and as long as 177, but most calculations put me around 167mm.

Even though my first experience with 165s was not great, I was willing to try them on my gravel bike in the name of science. I replaced my Shimano Ultegra setup with SRAM Apex.

Before even riding the bike they looked stubby to the naked eye.

I have to say, I like the Dub interface more and more as I use it.

I raised my saddle exactly 10mm to compensate for the cranks and headed out for a ride.

Some people are not very sensitive to fit changes. Some are. I fall into the latter category. Aside from the huge reduction in crank length, which I think any cyclist would notice, I immediately felt the saddle height change. It really felt like the bars were dropped a couple inches, not only one measly centimeter. I could also feel the change in saddle setback. Again, this crank length change pushes the knee forward in relation to the pedal spindle a full centimeter. I resisted the urge to make any other changes except the saddle height until I ride the bike a few times.

The first ride was just OK. The cranks definitely feel short. Sitting in the saddle on the flats felt fine, but when I stood to get over small rises the power wasn't there. On sustained climbs, my normal cadence felt slow. I had to drop down a gear and spin more to feel like I was going the same speed. My saddle also felt a little low, but it's hard to tell if it really is. Perhaps the smaller pedaling circle only made it feel that way.

This was a big change and one ride will not provide all the answers. In fact, it was such a big change that I am a little sore today. I'll keep riding this new setup to see if shorter cranks are part of my future. If I don't stick with them, perhaps Tadej Pogačar will be interested in buying them.

Later.

Gravel King

After the success of setting up my very old Mavic wheels tubeless by utilizing Schrader valves, I decided to replace my tires. This was long overdue as they were over seven years old and the rear was pretty bald.

I chose Panaracer GravelKing SS tires mostly because I got them for a song on clearance. I went with the 43mm width, a 3mm increase over my old 40mm tires.

The first GravelKing fit very loosely on the front Mavic rim. I could not get the tire to seat. I ordered more rim tape and started adding layers. Still loose. At four layers of tape I resorted to using an inner tube to at least get one side of the tire seated. Then I pulled the tube, reinstalled the valve and tried again. After a lot of soapy water, profanity and wrestling I finally managed to get it seated with the compressor.

The rear wheel was impossible even with SEVEN layers of rim tape. The bead was ridiculously loose. I finally resorted to fishing my old Teravail front tire out of the trash. Of course it seated right up even though it was over seven years old.

I rode the bike a few times in this configuration, frustrated that I couldn't use both new tires. When I returned home after one ride, I eyed my son's mountain bike hanging in the garage. It's the only other bike left with quick release wheels. Surely the Velocity Blunt 35 rims were too wide for gravel tires, right? To the internet!

The Velocity rims are 35mm external with a 31mm internal width. After consulting various charts and gravel web sites, I determined that 31mm was just on the edge of acceptable for a 43mm tire. I decided to give it a shot.

The tires were still a pain in the ass to seat on the Velocity rims, but at least not impossible. I thought that the tires would look ridiculous on the wide mountain bike rims, but they look pretty normal.

Clearance is a bit tight on the fork, but there's plenty of room in back. At most I think I could run a 45mm up front.

After a few rides, here are my thoughts: wide rims are awesome.

My sample size is still very small, but still, I really don't see any reason to use anything but the widest possible rim on a gravel bike. The change is that dramatic. Going from 19mm to 31mm completely changes how the bike behaves.

With the old rims I was running 43/45 (front/back) PSI just to keep the tires from squirming too much in the corners. When climbing out of the saddle I could still feel the front tire folding over, which was annoying.

Now with the same tires I am at 38/40 and I could probably go even lower. The ride is so much smoother with the added air volume and lower pressure. Cornering is confidence-inspiring with the larger contact patch and no tire squirm. I didn't feel any discernable difference in straight-line speed with the wider rims.

There is a 80 gram weight penalty per rim, and I can feel that a little. It works out to about one-third of a pound of rotating weight, and it's noticeable when climbing or accelerating.

It's been an interesting experiment and another example of how the learning never stops in this weird sport, even if you've been at it for over four decades.

Later.

Stan's Dead, Jim

I was airing up the tires on my gravel bike before a ride and one of them exploded. I had an idea what the issue might be. After pulling the tire I was right: the Stan's rim strip failed. It had rotted and split due to old age.

If you don't remember these, I don't blame you. Back in olden times when tubeless was just hitting the scene, we used these strips to convert non-tubeless rims. They looked like this:

My Deore XT/Mavic TN719 wheels date back to 2011 and they were used on various mountain bikes until I built the gravel bike in 2018. With an internal width of 19mm, they are narrow even by modern gravel standards.

One of the reasons I used this method over rim tape in 2018 was the Mavic TN719 rims are drilled for Schrader valves but used a plastic insert for Presta.

There was no way to seal a presta tubeless valve against the rim due to the split in the adapter. Here is the doodad removed:

I tried to find replacement strips, but they have pretty much gone extinct, especially in the narrow size I needed. Then it occurred to me there was a more modern solution for these very old rims.

I was already using Schrader tubeless valves on a couple bikes, so I decided to give it a go on the gravel wheels.

With a new layer of DT Swiss tape and valves installed, the old tires mounted up OK. Since the tires are well over seven years old and likely stretched out a bit, it took a little work, but not much. The increased airflow of Schrader valves certainly helped them seat.

These tires really need to be replaced, but I was hesitant to remove them because I knew the Stan's strips were likely to fall apart if I did. Now that I have a solution, I will look for some new tires.

Later.

Feeling the Crunch

I took the gravel bike out for a ride today. How could I not? After yesterday's epic gravel stage in the Tour de France, I was jonesing to feel the crunch of gravel beneath my own tires.

Much like the Tour stage, I have to get my gravel in short sectors. We don't have long gravel roads around my home.

Here is a one mile stretch near the river:

A half mile near Lake Natoma:

The gravel road between Beals Point and Granite Bay:

I still love to get out there and haul ass on the dirt with drop bars. I don't think the old cyclocross racer hidden somewhere deep within my soul will ever die.

Later.

Spacing Out

The purchase of the Jones created a situation where there was one more bike in the garage than hooks to hang them on. A huge problem, I know. I sold the Casseroll and the world is back in sync again.

I had actually been trying to sell the Salsa since last August, long before purchasing the Jones even entered my mind.

I bought the Casseroll new in 2009 as a single speed on clearance for $735. I unloaded some of the parts on eBay for about $250 and felt pretty good about it.

The only original parts left when I sold the bike were the frame, fork and brakes. It was built with mostly Dura Ace 9-speed parts originating in the last century. I sold it for $550. It was a good bike, but I saw an opportunity to unload a very old parts set and clear some needed space. The current gravel bike also made it redundant.

Later.

Sram Update

I took the gravel bike out today for the first time in a while. To be truthful, my new Sram drivetrain wasn't really meshing with me too well, so the bike was gathering dust. I was finding the shifting to be far inferior to the way Shimano does it. The one lever thing . . . I don't know. I was always finding myself between gears. The most maddening thing is when you shift a little too far when wanting a harder gear, and you actually get an easier one. Hilarity ensues!

The other thing I found was that the adjustment is far more finicky than I am used to. With Shimano you only need to get in the general ballpark and it shifts fine. Not so with Sram.

So the other day I spent some time lubing the hell out of the cables and really dialing in the pulley position and cable tension. It's now shifting much better.

Today I tried to really slow down the shifting motion—much slower than I would with STI—so I could feel and hear when the shift actually takes place. This helped tremendously. Once I made this small change the user experience improved. I rode for a couple hours today and very much enjoyed riding the gravel bike again.

In the end, it's not like I am racing, so shifting more deliberately isn't a big deal. I assume eventually I will adapt and not have to think about it anymore. Old habits die hard.

Later.

Double Tap

I like to replace my bike parts every 20 years or so, whether they need it or not. I am weird like that. The parts in question are the shifters on my gravel bike.

I bought these Dura Ace 7700 STI shifters way back in 1998. They have been used on countless bikes over the years, and they have seen a lot of racing.

Frames came and went.

As did styles of racing.

And they saw use long after I stopped racing.

These are only a few examples of the bikes they have adorned. On each bike they dutifully performed their shifting and braking duties without complaint.

But it was time to move on, and time to move into the 21st Century. I looked around and read about what was available out there. All my mountain bikes at this point are utilizing a single ring in front, so I thought I should go that route. In my opinion, Shimano just isn't there yet on the road side. Ultimately I decided to buy my first Sram drivetrain EVER.

I decided on an 11-42 cassette and a 44-tooth chainring. I typically used a 38/48 chainring combo on my cross bikes, so I wouldn't lose much on the high end. On the low end, I would make great gains with the massive 42-tooth cog.

My current gravel frame uses mountain bike spacing (135mm) in the rear. Paired with a road crankset, the cassette is spaced 2.5mm outboard in relation to the chainrings. For this reason I used the outer position for the Race Face narrow-wide ring, and the chainline is spot on.

Setup was pretty straightforward. The only hiccup I encountered was my first chain being too short. I ordered a 120-link chain and it was perfect.

I really like the clean look without a front derailleur.

After over 20 years of shifting with STI, I must say it was frustrating to adapt to Double Tap. At one point I said aloud, "This is #%&@ing stupid." As that first ride progressed, it became easier, and the cussing subsided, but by no means did shifting become second nature.

On the pro side, braking has improved significantly. I think the Sram levers have a slightly higher cable pull ratio, so the brakes felt less mushy and I didn't have to run the pads so close to the rotor. I also liked how much more solid the lever blade feels because it isn't also a shifting mechanism like with Shimano STI.

For the cons, I would say so far using one lever for both shifts is not great. However, I know this is simply because I am not used to it. Millions of cyclists, including top professionals, are successfully using the system without issue.

I worried that the wide range of the cassette might not lend itself to road riding, but I noticed no difference. In reality I simply added two bigger cogs (which I have yet to use) to the nine speeds I was used to for all these years.

Overall I think this will be a fine drivetrain choice. Will it last for 20 years? Doubtful. When I purchased the Dura Ace so many years ago, it was top of the line. This new equipment is pretty far down the Sram food chain. Anyway, time will tell. Either way, it probably outlasts my aging body.

Later.

Sram

After using Shimano road components for at least a couple decades, I am about to embark on a new journey using Sram.

Should be fun. Time to upgrade.

Later.