so i'm back from that amazing trip in toronto back in the sunny northeast although it is
actually sunny now i'm only back home for a short amount of time though because quick turnaround
and we're heading down to london i've got a sort out which bike i'm taking and assess
the damage on the one i took to spain i don't think my tyre choice was the best
there's no air in this tyre anymore and i've changed t-shirts and in the time it took me
to change shirts it's now a miserable day outside this is the gravel bike that i took
riding for 15 cumulative hours of riding in derona on some pretty big gravel one two and three that's
two worm things in one hole because it wouldn't seal they're both in the same place on the wheel
and i think what's happened is i've hit a big rock bottomed out the tire luckily i haven't done any
damage to the rim but i've cut the sidewall and like pinched it on both sides so created two very
small holes which are hard to seal for tubeless now these have been the skinniest off-road tyres
that i've ever used they have got very significant knobbles on them which is fantastic if you're in
mud but when you're on dry gravel and you're riding over big rocks i can conclude skinny
tires not as good as fat ones i probably would have got away with it and avoided any punches
if i pump these up even harder so i was running about 35 psi in them if i'd have gone a little bit
higher probably wouldn't have bottomed the tire out but you're exchanging that for comfort so
these would have been rock hard felt terrible a bone shaking ride and if you're doing
six and a half hours which is what the third day was that's going to be basically a horrible
experience i'm planning on making a video on off-road tyre choice and everything that i've
learned over the last few months more testing needs to be done though and i need a new tyre
so
unfortunately the next width up with this tread on so the hutchinson toro
is a 45 or a 47 millimeter which will be way too wide to fit in that frame so
i'm gonna have to get inventive find something that will fit give me the benefits of having
a little bit more tread lovely and new when i set up my tubeless i used to do all the sealant
through the valve hole but as you uh would have seen in that pov clip i started just pouring it
straight into the tyre and then putting it on definitely the easier method if you're
doing it at home and don't have like a syringe and stuff and of course i measure my ceiling
very carefully to the millimeter so as a conclusion to this segment of the video if
you're going to be riding gravel like this it is big sharp rocks that are loose and you're probably
better suited on an xc bike for some of it then you might want to go for fatter tires than 33 mil
phase two of this video i've been sent some demo wheels from dov my mate who
runs parkours to have a play with on this gravel bike because technically it's not a gravel bike
they sell it as a all-road slash gravel or road what is all road and these are apparently all
road wheels which means they're made to work with road tires but really really wide ones so
i've got some 30 mil road tyres to put on and that will mean i have a wheel set
that i can switch to when i want to use this bike on the road wonder where these have been
dusty so the model of these wheels is the ronda i was going to put inner tubes in but maybe
they're prime tubeless we've never tried rode tubeless before so these wheels have got a 22.5
internal rim width and that basically dictates how wide your tire is going to sit on it so
that's quite a relevant number to look at it'll be interesting to see how fat these
30 mil tyres end up being when they're installed i'll go and grab some sealant and we'll find out
almost too easy why is there two different types of lock rings shiny stuff now i'm not sure
where this cassette is from but it looks alright and it's 11 speed so you'll be fine bit dirty
always grease your hubs yeah doing this means your cassette is a lot less likely to get stuck on the
freehub just like you would on your pedals if you do any home mechanics i would recommend getting a
big tub of grease like this this is pro gold but other brands are available i bought this about
10 years ago and as you can see there's loads left still and it was only like three quid more
than the tiny little syringe you can buy good job or as they would say up here candy nice
cool well it definitely doesn't look weird
with road tires on maybe that's what all road means let's take it for a ride
right local loop about an hour long this one up a bit climb down a bit climb dummy up out
of breath can confirm tires are very very fat on these wheels i've been riding the same width on
my road bike for the last few months and they are significantly bigger mountain into these parkours
feel super smooth probably running too much pressure in them so i just left it when i
set up the tubeless historically i've always avoided the road tubeless thing because with
higher pressures the ceiling just tends to kind of spur out and not actually seal any holes so
maybe this is the kind of combination you need fatter tire
lower pressure so it has more chance of sealing currently survived 5k so all going well
quickly my eyes tested and riding well hard up this time because i saw a guy in
a red jersey up head pushed on for like 30 seconds and then it turns out it was this
and this cheers guys
smoothest ride in the world pushed on a bit studied all my
base miles in spain you see and now i'm doing a hard session i'll be flying i
just thought it might be a good idea to ask dov who makes these wheels what all road is
i'm on a beach in sunny greece working hard uh i'm very jealous i'm actually racing this weekend so
uh technically i'm resting up before uh before the big day right yeah yeah yeah take her off
this is what this is what take a week looks like your new wheels that you sent me have
made my tires very fat like can you tell me what all the road is so i mean it kind of does what
it says on the tin i mean all road is designed for anything that looks like or resembles a road
so the idea being that you can take them pretty much anywhere you go put the light fire on and
you know you can be plenty fast out on the roads um up some climbs and then you know if
you're riding along and you get distracted by a nice looking gravel trail just go and
explore it actually fun they're designed to be the most aerodynamic for the 28 but you know
a lot of people are choosing to run them with money a little for something a little bit
just to give you that sort of more all-road tyre to match the all-road wheel
so you know i'm running online having great fun you know you can ride on pretty much anything
you want so there you go i'm going to keep hold of these wheels for a while give them a bit of a test
they are a demo set i think they are exactly the same as the release ones but uh journalist
has just had them before me so give them a good go on this bike which i'm probably gonna ride on the
road quite a lot because it's basically winter now and the grx brakes are a million times better than
the dura ace once it's basically a perfect winter bike and i can ride some not too intense gravel
around here now the plan today was to drive down to london this evening after daisy's work daisy
didn't go to work today though because she's very unwell we went and got a covert test this morning
and it's negative so she must have caught whatever i had over the last couple of weeks which is
like kind of sinus-y infection thing um but she's reacted a lot worse than me to it so she's feeling
terrible she's been in bed all day obviously we're not going to be traveling down to london
when she's in that state so we need to figure out a plan whether we're still going to go
fingers crossed she starts feeling better because we were looking forward to catching
up with some family and friends what do you do to make yourself feel better chicken soup
we don't eat chicken daisy can you sum up your day in three words
tiring snotty coughing so what is it