So took the bike out for a long ride today, eventually after I dealt with a slipping seat post. The RSL I was using seems to be a bit thin and would not allow the seat collar to hold in place, dropped about 6 cm in less than 5 miles. So back to the house where I pulled the carbon post out of my FX so we could be on our way. A friend and I end up doing 78 miles total of which 26 was on hard pack grass and dirt with no roots. As I do not have any power data for tires in a 40mm width or this style of tread, any numbers given are an apples and orange comparison, not to mention weather conditions, so again, grain of salt here.

Wind was pretty light, maybe 5 to 8 initially, but out of the NE\E which created a mostly cross tail wind on our way down along with traffic wind assist on occasion, then of course the ride back was a horrific 10 to 15 mph out of the NNE, which meant a crappy 26 mile return headwind. When I look back at the numbers, my avg speed on the asphalt was around 17.5 roundtrip, which I thought was actually quite good due to the wind and tires, and my power increased about 10 to 15 watts overall. I have ridden the road portion of this route often, and can generally maintain 19 to 21 with an avg power of 195 to 205 on my own. With an additional rider or two, 22-24 avg speed and a slight reduction in power as we paceline. Today, the avg power was 218, again, calculations could be a little wonky here as I am pulling just for the road from my segment times and power readings, so this could be a giant pile of crap. However, I felt like the tires rolled fantastic on the asphalt and when we were heading down, there were sections where I was in front and we were rolling at 22-24 and I was in the 46-18 combo, again, tailwind assisted, but they did not feel wonky on the road, felt very grippy, did not feel like they would roll over on the corners due to the aggressive edges at all. I was able to hear the slight buzzing of the knobs, but not unexpected. I ran my pressure around 38 front, 40 on the rear. Knowing I would eventually run offroad, I set them lower for that, if it would have been an all road ride, I would have raised the pressure a bit, 42\45 or something around that. Conditions were exception dry and warm today.

Overall the bike was so comfortable, the Rival hoods absolutely 1k times more comfortable than my Force D1 hoods on my Domane\Emonda, fit my hands so much better, I am seriously considering changing them out to the Force D2 or the Rival hoods on my Domane, I am sort of stuck on the Emonda, it is rim brake and they have not offer a rim brake smaller hood option. The handlebars are 1 size wider than I normally ride, at 42, so that felt a little off initially, but less so as the ride progressed, but the reach to the shifters from the drops were outstanding on the Zipp Service Course SL 70's I combined with the 80mm stem setup and couldn't be more happy with that. Running from the lower bars was also good and I plan to leave the spacing where it is at so I will not need to trim the steerer any.

I think in the long run, since a vast majority of the off road paths for the gravel scene around here is hard packed grass and dirt, I am going to swap out tires for something less aggressive, either the Gravel H or possible a 35mm road tire such as those Pirelli All Road I mentioned, or even the Cinturato Velo in 35. The guy I rode with today was riding on 40mm Maxxis Re-Fuse tires that were basically road tires with a little bit of rough surface and handled all the offroad we did with ease except for the small, maybe 100 yard segment, that had some loose sand. He had to roll to the outside of that. I wont use Maxxis tires, bad experiences with them in the past, and that is where they will remain. I will hang on to the Cinurato RCX tires for when the surface will be more wet or sloppy as they will work fantastic even with some asphalt riding.

So if you are going to be doing more road than off, I think something of an all road type or a wide road tire will definitely be worth the change.