The wife is thinking of getting me some rollers for x-mas so I can actually ride while the kid is needing frequent attention. I know that high mileage on a trainer eats tires up fast, but what about rollers? Am I safe to ride my good tires, or should I throw some cheapies on?

regular tires are fine

Thanks. It's been quite a while since I've ridden that circus machine.

The wear is not like a wind trainer at all, although it will square them out eventually. You can play with different tires to get different resistance though. I've found cheapo or puncture resistant ones are much harder to spin around. My race tires, maybe too easy. In the end, I'm too lazy and just use whatever I got on at the moment.

I use last season's tubulars, pumped up hard. Lower Crr = more wheel speed = more stability.

I just ordered these...Vittoria Home Trainer pro

https://www.amazon.com/Vittoria-Zaffi.../dp/B001QD0DCU

I figure any way I go I will end up ordering a new set of tires. I'll either square off and destroy my set on now and have to get a new set or get these now. Plus I have a set of rollers and a trainer, and I've found rollers tend to be a little harder on tires. They have pretty good reviews all around, and a decent price.

For riding my rollers, I use my heaviest wheels, an old set of Campagnolo Ventos with deep aluminum rims, and a set of cheap wire bead tires. The heavy wheels and tires make the bike very stable on the rollers, making it easier to ride in a straight line, even no hands. The cheap tires are made with a fairly hard rubber compound that provides more rolling resistance. Rollers, even reduced radius ones have a much larger diameter than the roller on a trainer, so they cause much less tire wear. Using the same tires for several years now and can't detect much wear

Depends on so many variables. What kind of efforts you are going to do, material the roller drums are made from, how heavy you are.

If I ride hard intervals on the rollers, and mine have aluminum drums, I can shred tires in no time at all. If I'm just using it to spin and warm up before track races, I can have very fragile pista tires on there and not damage them.

I've just used standard road tires, and they've worked fine on my 4.5" Kreitlers. A small roller might be different. I have not seen the wear that is seen on a trainer for whatever reason. It might square the rear a little, but my rear tire was a little square to begin with, so it's hard to judge. I'm got plenty of roller hours, though, and it's not too big of a deal.

If I was going to get picky, I'd probably put some cheap Forte tires on, but honestly, it's a good place to kill tires that have one foot in the grave to begin with.

Just keeping the legs spinning, probably PVC, 180 and climbing (until I get back in the saddle).

I just use Gatorskins on my rollers. For me, with aluminum drums, it doesn't matter whether I'm doing a recovery ride or VO2 intervals, there is virtually no wear on the tires with lots of riding.