New to the forum as I have a question and wanted to sound out some advice before my first Tri. I have been cycling for 6 months now and jumped in with Trainerroad too, currently just finishing Sweet Spot Base II. I decided to sign up and try a triathlon as my A race for the season and a bit of fun; its a classic so 40Km bike leg.
My question is should I spend some money and upgrade my tyres for the race, currently I have cheap standard 25mm tyres, but I have heard from listening to the podcast a couple of weeks back that tyres are a place to potentially make some big savings. I don’t want to spend loads of money on GP50000 etc (overkill for my level) but can anyone recommend a good comprimise / upgrade or should I just stick with what I have for now (I’m looking do it for big rather than marginal gains at this stage)?
I agree with GP4000sII as a cheaper alternative to the 5000s.
Personally, I have found the 4000’s a very durable tire, and have got over 10,000km/6000 miles out of my current pair, but was only getting 3-4000km out of cheaper tires. On a cost per mile, the Conti’s are excellent value.
Tires are pretty much the best upgrade you can make to your bike. Good tires offer more comfort, less rolling resistance, AND more grip. It’s worth spending money here rather than going as cheap as possible.
This is my go-to road tire for road at $41 a tire, they’re super fast, and priced very well. You can run them with tubes, I would suggest latex tubes if you go that route.
Is the GP5000 that much more expensive? Looks like it’s a bit more than $10 more than the GP4000 online. In any case, latex tubes are also a pretty big gain over butyl tubes.
It’s more expensive, and it seems to be made out of unobtainium - it’s out of stock everywhere that sells it at reasonable prices. The unreasonable sellers are well stocked, for sure.
Note those are 650B - sure there’s load of stock on those. And 120 USD for a pair is expensive - PBK sells the pair 110 CAD (so 85 USD). And the GP4k pair for 90 CAD (70 USD).
To be fair it all depends on what you pick from the link - not sure why the embed image on the forum defaults to a 650 one, but the 700x25 are the price I listed
I guess everything is relative, when they first were available in January they were more than that everywhere. I haven’t priced them recently as I don’t need anything. I didn’t know you could get the tubeless for $42.50/tire USD - that’s a big difference, you’re right
Which version were you trying to get? They update stock and prices fluctuate a bit over time.
I got myself a pair of GP5000 28mm tubed from them for cheap. Super happy about it and will probably move to tubeless eventually. Tubeless stock does seem a bit harder to come by.
I bought tubed 25mm, which were shown in stock (and still are), but they cancelled the order a few hours after confirming it, claiming out-of-stock. I’m getting GP4ks from CRC instead.
Update - it appears PBK is slightly lost. They just sent me a message confirming shipping of items they cancelled yesterday. So perhaps I am getting GP5ks. Who knows.
