Gamjams Reviews - Race Tires - Contintental GP 4000

One of my mentors at work always says a quip that hits me hard: Where the rubber meets the road.

In certain situations, there is little redundancy and you have to have assurance that a system will perform as required. My colleague rides motorcycles, so like me, he knows that you can have all of the best equipment in the world, but there's one important contact point that keeps you upright.

So, tires are kinda important to us cyclists. Maybe that's why they're so stupidly expensive.

On my last bike, I was kinda cheap. I rolled with Hutchinson Carbon Comp tires that I got from performance for under $20. They were uber soft rubber, nice and sticky - no complaints there. However, the tires wore too easily and the rubber dried up pretty quickly, too. That meant that eventually, you'd get a flat.

When I got my new wheels last June, I slapped on some Michelin Pro3Race tires. I guess I felt that more expensive rubber would be a decent investment.

Until a few weekends ago at the barn, in about 3,500 miles, I had one flat. It wasn't on the road, luckily, I just found the tire flat one night. I guess it was some slow leak.

The Michelins are sticky, that's for sure. They're kinda soft, too, so they do cut easily. Along with a better bike, they were pretty crisp on the road and through turns, and I never remember having any pissed-off-at-equipment moments with them.

Until that shredding incident at the barn that I attribute to gravel.

On most bicycles, the front tire doesn't wear nearly as fast as the rear tire. I had replaced the rear tire of the Pro3s at least once, and the front tire was wearing just fine - not much at all. I guess over the time of a few months, though, the rubber dried up and got stiff, making the tire crack.

After a few too many miles riding horrible gravel and scree in West Virginia, the front tire shredded. A cut nearly an inch long formed perpendicular to the tire, straight across. About half of the cut was on the sidewall, part on the shoulder. Luckily not much, if any at all was on the riding surface.

If anything, riding over 35 miles back to the barn proved to me that the Pro3s, even after destruction, are pretty strong. I think they're great tires, but will emphasize that the rear tire wears extremely quickly and although you can be tempted to only replace that, in the future I'd replace those tires as a set because the front dries out.

Luck would have it that I had a new set of tires in the trunk of my car that weekend at the barn. I had to replace the destroyed front tire, and I found a cut on my relatively new rear Pro3, so I decided to switch out the set.

Nobody wants unmatched tires anyways, right?

Well, through NCVC's team night at Spokes, Etc. I had ordered a pair of Continental GP 4000 tires. I'd read enough great reviews saying they're sticky tires but more durable than the comprable Pro3s.

That Sunday morning at the barn, I descended Howards Lick Road in pouring rain and thick fog. Basically, I'm going to repeat what I said before about these tires, since I've only got a few hours riding on them so far:

The GP4000s, in addition to perfectly matching the blue on my vintage Gerolsteiner frame, just plain rock. If you can descend a steep, bumpy, and curvy mess like Howards Lick Road in soaking wet, blind conditions and not think about where the rubber meets the road, you've got good confidence in your equipment.

Because of that confidence, I can surely justify the steep price (even with team discounts) for tires like the Pro3s or the GP4000s. Even if they are only marginally better than a pair half as expensive, the knowledge that I've got good equipment at the nexus of speed and friction.