The challenge with Lutsen will be the actual trail conditions. It is a non-technical course but it can be very wet and muddy in many sections. Though I don’t know that I would run an actual mud tire in that race. You’ll be rising a mix of road, dirt road, snowmobile track, and singletrack. I don’t think there is a perfect tire for that course so I’d keep an eye on the weather leading up to the race and make a decision then. Personally I ran race kings and it was a fairly wet course. I only felt I was hindered on a couple of punchy climbs at the end of the race.
2 Likes
Race Kings for me (with inserts) at Lutsen the last two years. Despite the mud, they worked fine and I’d run them again.
(Well, where any tire actually worked at all, there were sections last year everyone was walking)
1 Like
My Rick 2.4’s still measure no more than 2.28 inch after 2 months on my 30mm id rims.
I tried to widen them by inflating to their max. allowed pressure and leave them for a few days, but still 2.28".
I repeated this a few times but nothing works.
Disappointing to be honest.
2 Likes
Yeah, I’ve heard about potential for mud at Lutsen, so I’ll have a backup tire on case. But like you said, it would have to be pretty atrocious to run actual mud tires.
I’ve never ran conti MTB tires, I’m assuming you ran 2.20 protections?
Ohh I forgot about the peyote xx, I’ve ran barzo and mezcals before. 2.4 Aspen vs 2.4 peyote? thoughts?
Yeah, after doing a race at Fort Ord, i think your right. The rain ruts and sand makes things tricky. I’ll keep the wide tires on, though I might try a 2.2 Aspen or 2.4 Aspen st in back.
But for Lutsen I’ll size down.
I like both. The Peyote is faster by around 8-10 watts for whole bike setup on a range of conditions. It’s also faster than even a Thunder Burt 2.1 in anything rough at all.
peyote hooks up pretty well. Badass tire in the newest compound (XC race formulation)
1 Like
Lutsen: I ran Rush Pro 2.4. Insert only in the back (xc). It’s always wet, so you get muddy. The actual mud isn’t deep. The water crossings have a solid base, so just charge thru. Lots of gravel. Plan on replacing bearings and housing post race.
1 Like
Do you know the bead-to-bead width? My Nobby Nics are 152mm - and measure 2.25” when mounted. Im pretty sure the bead-to-bead width needs to be 160mm+ for tires to measure 2.4” mounted on 30mm rims. Agree , it’s very disappointing Schwalbe can’t get their act together on tire size, as the tires are otherwise quite good.
Unfortunately, classic Schwalbe. I wonder at which point this becomes an actual case of consumer mislabeling. The only way they could save face on this would be to state on which rim widths their claimed sized are measured.
Peyote is measuring extremely fast on available tests so far, but the 2.4 Aspen still has on its side the volume (the Peyote is not even and true 2.4 while the Aspen is actually more like a 2.5) and a proven track record of puncture resistance and casing reliability. The Peyotes didn’t score that well on Barr’s puncture test and there seem to be some less than stellar reports around on the new Race casing robustness
2 Likes
I wouldn’t say it is non-technical: the singletrack that was removed for last years race was rocky, flared k sections and stream crossings. Yes, the rest was absolutely non-technical and I completely rethought my tire choice when the singletrack was removed.
According to BRR the new Aspen Team Spec isn’t wider than Rick XC and Peyote when measuring knobs. Aspen seems to have more air volume, but the total tire is actually narrower than Peyote and the same as Rick XC. (The regular Aspen is wider than all else because it has more side knobs than Team Spec.)
1 Like
Well they use some 15mm inner width wheel or whatever also 
2 Likes
gonna ring up Enve and Zipp to see if they’ll sell me a set of 15mm iw MTB rims.
Sure Everything is measured the same, but I can’t help thinking that ya know, maybe the inner width should scale up with the tire width? That would be a huge ask for BRR, but the wider the tires go, the farther away from reality the rolling resistance and measurement tests they get.
1 Like
Yeah, I value the BRR data for giving us some standardized measurements, but I think for a variety of reasons, you have to take them with a grain of salt, especially for MTB. I’m happy the data exists and will continue to support more MTB tires being tested, but in my mind, the data has to be considered along with how the tires ride on your setup and trails. I would be shocked if the tire shape on a 15mm rim didn’t have an impact on the rolling resistance, and it’s way different than the 25-30mm rims the average XC racer runs nowadays.
4 Likes
Agreed. I’m going to continue to subscribe and vote. Would I like more? yeah, but what we have still informs our decisions.
3 Likes
Hiya folks 
This seems like appropriate time to mention this. I’m outdoor testing (Chung method, 3 off-road surfaces) gravel and XC tires as I come across them.
On the roughest gravel, I’ve done 2.4 Aspen, 2.1 Thunder Burt, and 2.4 peyote so far. Rick XC 2.4 next.
Kinda unsure what I’ll have access to next couple months. Still planning that out but hope to get some more of the hot stuff XC tires in the mix. 2.4s tested on 29 mm Kovee RSL hoops.
All of it’s on my Instagram and I’ll occasionally ask for some tires sent in to test on stories there. As some have mentioned, BRR is cool but things change off road.
13 Likes
In my opinion, the most relevant metric for tyre performance is casing width and resulting volume, not width at the knobs. So I couldn’t care less if the Rick XC is wider or narrower at the knobs if the casing is something like 2.25.
1 Like
I agree that volume is what matters, but I disagree that they are «mislabeling» when they measure with knobs. Volume could potentially be a better measurement for tire-sizing, except for cyclocross where there is a width-rule.