{"id":238442,"date":"2026-04-14T10:50:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T10:50:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/14\/its-all-in-the-wrist\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T10:50:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T10:50:28","slug":"its-all-in-the-wrist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/14\/its-all-in-the-wrist\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s All In The Wrist"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Okay, look, I know I shouldn\u2019t automatically reject things just because they\u2019re new, but what are we even doing here<\/a>?<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m not like a bike designer or an engineer or whatever, but there\u2019s got to be a better solution than this, right?<\/p>\n

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Right\u2026?<\/p>\n

Whatever, it\u2019s not my problem. I stopped trying to keep up with bike tech years ago. As far as I\u2019m concerned, 32-inch wheels are just another thing to throw on the \u201cLet the next generation deal with it\u201d pile, like climate change or depopulation.<\/p>\n

So when did I become a cycling renunciate exactly? Well, it\u2019s hard to say, since you don\u2019t just wake up one day hating everything; rather, it\u2019s something that creeps up on you gradually, like the inability to sleep through the night without having to get up to urinate. Certainly I consummated my relationship with retrogrouchery in early 2020, when I took delivery of the first of many Rivendae<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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There are also frequent reminders that reaffirm my decision, such as when it took me two whole wrist-snapping days to mount a pair of tubeless tires on the Industry Standard Gravelling Appliance<\/a>, during which I often found myself sobbing and wailing plaintively to the heavens: \u201cWhy do people put themselves through this!?!\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, apparently I\u2019m not alone, because there\u2019s a new tool that\u2019s supposed to make the job much easier<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m old enough to remember when people wouldn\u2019t even admit to using tire levers with their clincher tires lest their fellow riders accuse them of manual weakness, but the tubeless tire appears to have won the literal thumb-wrestling match with masculinity once and for all, because people aren\u2019t even pretending they can rawdog it anymore:<\/p>\n

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I don\u2019t know about you guys, but it sure seems like tires are getting a little harder to install lately. Add some tire inserts, and it can become nearly impossible in some cases. Today,\u00a0CushCore\u00a0releases a possible solution to that problem. Introducing the Rotary Tire Tool.<\/em><\/p>\n

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And while $299 might seem like a lot, by about the ninth hour of my own ordeal, when mine own thumbs did ache and I did cry out, \u201cMy Lob, My Lob, why hast thou Fred-saken me?,\u201d I would gladly have forked over twice that to Satan had he appeared bearing one of these tools in order to tempt me off the cross: <\/p>\n

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Jesus may have had nails through his wrists, but that\u2019s nothing compared to the pain I experienced in my own.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately it\u2019s now too late\u2013not just for me because I no longer have the ISGA, but also for humanity because this tool only goes up to 29\u2033, which is now obsolete, because everyone\u2019s moving on to 32-inch wheels. And even if they do make a 32-inch version you\u2019ll still have to get a whole new 32-inch-specific garbage can:<\/p>\n

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So much for that.<\/p>\n

Speaking of which, do you ever wake up in the middle of the night worried that you\u2019ve been inflating your tires to a sub-optimal pressure? Me neither. Still, I read (or at least skimmed) this post on the Paper-Thin Tire Enthusiast Website<\/a> with interest, or at least something adjacent to it:<\/p>\n

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Remember how they said high pressure isn\u2019t faster?<\/p>\n

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This year marks 20 years of\u00a0<\/em>Bicycle Quarterly\u2019s\u00a0ground-breaking real-road research into tire performance. Back in the spring of 2006, we started testing tires on real roads, with a rider on the bike. The results surprised everybody\u2014us included: High pressure doesn\u2019t make supple high-performance tires roll faster. That went counter to what had been accepted wisdom for over a century. That\u2019s why performance tires were narrow\u2014so they could run at high pressure. Back then, road bikes ran 20 or 23 mm tires, inflated to 110 psi (7.5 bar) or more.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Well, another test says it is faster:<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s taken a while\u2014almost 20 years\u2026 We\u2019re excited that the\u00a0Escape Collective\u00a0has used the same techniques for a\u00a0similar study of real-road tire performance. What they found is surprising, at least at first sight. You may have seen the headline:\u00a0\u201c<\/em>Get ready to rethink accepted wisdom.\u201d\u00a0That\u2019s because the author and tester, Ronan McLaughlin, found that the highest pressure rolled fastest\u2014for all tires he tested.<\/em><\/p>\n

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This would appear to undermine everything the Paper-Thin Tire Mogul has been saying for the past 20 years, but actually it doesn\u2019t, because it only applies to your cheap, crappy tires, not the expensive lambskin wheel condoms he sells:<\/p>\n

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In fact, I think that is what we are seeing here. It matches what we found in our first tire tests, way back in 2006: Second-tier tires do roll faster at higher pressures, at least on pavement, and up to a point. Above is roll-down data for the Rivendell Rolly-Poly 27 mm tire. Lower times means faster rolling. The Rolly-Poly rolls much faster at 85 psi than at 55 or 35 psi\u2014just like the Pirellis tested by the\u00a0<\/em>Escape Collective. At ultra-high pressure, the effect tails off: At 105 psi, the Rolly-Poly rolls no faster than at 85 psi. (Unlike the other differences, the 0.2 second faster roll-down time is not statistically significant.)<\/em><\/p>\n

However, if we look the results for other tires, we see that the Rolly-Poly was somewhat of an outlier. The Rolly-Poly was a relatively stiff tire, and it rolled fastest at the highest pressure we tested.<\/em><\/p>\n

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To be fair I think what he\u2019s saying makes sense, but I find it pretty funny anyway.<\/p>\n

Speaking of irony, here\u2019s a gravel event that has broken with the standard naming convention (sorry, STNDRD NMG CNVNTN) and taken an entirely new approach:<\/p>\n

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As I understand it, \u201crolling coal\u201d is this:<\/p>\n

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