"The 33"-Road Bike Racing - cleared to race! now with questions!

A little while back I was lamenting the sad state of my fitness due to illness and injury. Well, I saw a physio on Friday who put my knee through its paces on and off the bike, took some scans, etc. and then submitted her verdict: "moderately-severe patellar tendinitis" (basically it aches all the time and feels weak, but isn't bad enough to be immobilizing. ANYWAY, long story short, I'm cleared to race...just have to wear this somewhat bulky strap that disables my patellar tendon.

SO, back to racing. I have a question regarding tires. I understand the benefits and risks associated with running high psi racing tires (22-23s), but am wondering if picking up a set of narrower slicks will be at all worthwile. FWIW, I'm running 25s at the moment

As a doctor, take care of that patellar tendon. -Itis means inflammation, and you should be doing whatever you can to decrease that inflammation whether light massage, ice, ultrasound, drugs or whatever. Tendons take a LONG time to heal - strap or no strap.

As a racer, I personally only use really thin tires for time trials. If using clinchers, continental makes a combo (attack and force) which are great tires. I think the front is 21 and the rear 23, but I may be wrong on that. I prefer tubulars for most racing and since I am not doing Roubaix style races anything between 21 and 23 is fine by me.

Conti 4000, Attack/Force, Vittoria CX's, Michelin ProRace2's are all great tires. You'll get a lot of opinions on this subject as any other subjective one. Basically stay away from the ultra-light clincher race tires, they have little or no puncture resistance, flatting isn't going to win you any races. Like the Doc I run tubular tires on my race wheels but todays clinchers a pretty good substitute.

Attack/Foce, I'm pretty sure are 22/23mm. For road races and crits, of the folks running clinchers (which is proably 80% plus) Vast majority are using 23mm. Not to many use 25 mm, and there's not much advantge going narrower.

Below 23mm in a crit or road race (as opposed toTT) you start get into tradeoffs of grip, tire pressure, flat resistence , rolling resistence

Thanks for the responses folks, any idea what kind of pricing I'd be looking at for a set of of the Contis? (I run continentals on my mountain bike and they're about $50 per) Obviously I don't know much about road tires; I've only been a roadie since the fall.

As far as the knee goes, my doctor has me on a physical therapy regimen focusing on the negative phase of various low resistance weight lifts, and is funneling anti-inflammatories down my throat. It's been a chronic problem, so I have no illusions that healing will be a quick fix...

check probikekit.com for Conti pricing

Have fun racing, but really be careful not to stress it. RICE is your friend (rest, ice, compression, elevation), so is stretching. At the beginning of last year I had tendonitis. Eventually it went away, but because I let it get bad in the first place it flared back up in the middle of the season and made me have to abandon one of my goals for the year. Its early in the season, take it easy for a while!