Holy smokes was my commute in this morning different to what it has been.

For the last month, I’ve been virtually flying in to work on what I am calling my CX bike, only on Continental Sport Contact 32mm tyres. I normally keep these inflated to at least 80psi.

Yesterday though, on a whim, and partly because I have a couple of very short trail sections on my ride, I thought I would switch tyres to my Bontrager CX3s, inflated to 40psi.

I know I should have a second set of wheels in order to be able to switch when I want, but in the meantime, I know that when I get home, I will be going back to the Contis. This morning’s commute was so much slower and sluggish on the knobbly tyres. I liked the ‘off piste’ bits, but otherwise I don’t understand how some people can use their CX or gravel bikes for commuting as well, unless they all juts have two sets of wheels and can easily switch tyres when they want.

80 psi vs 40 psi is one hell of a difference too

One-one 120tpi gravel tyres roll very well on the road at 50 psi and set up tubeless very easy, tyre compound/tread design and tpi make a big difference and as the CX3 have a rather chunky tread pattern designed for CX they will drag.

I was surprised at the 45psi limit of the CX3s. I can understand keeping them low by choice, but are all CX-specific tyres limited like these?

cheap heavy tyres always ride dreadfully

How long is your commute?
Bit of a generalisation, but I’ve roughly found ~1mph between tyre types
Road Race -> Light Touring/Training -> Touring/CX -> XC MTB -> General MTB -> Gnar

So does that ~2mph really take that much longer to get to work?

Not saying you/your opinion are wrong, just a little surprised you found such a big difference.

cynic-al, are you suggesting the CX3s are cheap and heavy? I wouldn’t have thought so…

EDIT: fifeandy, I’m sure it’s just my subjective impression. It’s just that I have been riding the route almost every day for about 8 years, up until December on a hybrid with Marathon Pluses. I then got the new bike (a Rapide RL 2) with the Contis and loved it. Until this morning, when it felt heavy… a bit like I had gone back to my old Marathon Pluses! (Maybe not quite that bad…)