Drift Innovation Customer Service

I’ve been running the 26″ x 2.0″ Michelin WildRace’R tires on my mountain bike since August 2012. All of my riding is in dry conditions. When I ride trails, I change to a knobby tire so I’ve used these tires primarily for asphalt and dirt/gravel road riding.

Michelin describes the WildRace’R tires as follows: “Features a broad distribution of knobs across the tread to promote efficiency and help ensure excellent resistance to punctures. The position of the shoulder knobs helps provide superb grip when climbing out of ruts or when leaned over. This also helps offer more predictable, progressive cornering.”

They were only about $15/each so a pretty reasonably priced tire. However; my tread pattern is much different than that shown on the Michelin website (http://www.michelinbicycletire.com/michelinbicycle/index.cfm?event=wildracer.view) so I suspect I have an older model. That probably explains the price.

I ride in rural New Mexico so there are lots of thorns, goat heads, and crud on the shoulder of the road (glass bits and stones). To date, I’ve never had to fix a flat on the side of the road with these tires. However; that isn’t the whole story. I run a set of the very heavy Slime inner tubes which I know have saved the day, many times. Every time I switch tires, I pull at least a half dozen thorns out of the tires/tubes. These buggers are generally pretty long too – all the way into the tube.

I’ve put approximately 1000 miles on them and they have held up very well. The knobs on my version of the tire are pretty close, more like a road tire than a dirt tire. The rolling resistance of these tires seems to be slightly less than my knobby tires but I can’t put a unit of measure on it, sorry…

For such a reasonable price, I am happy with them.

I’ve lived near Albuquerque for nearly seven years but had never ridden the Sandia Foothills Open Space trails. I decided to change that this past weekend.

Saturday dawned a beautiful day. An early morning flight always makes a day even better. After landing, I loaded up my bike, gear, and liquids and headed for Albuquerque.  I arrived at the Copper Trailhead at about noon.

The trails in this area are mostly pretty wide, hardpack, and covered with sort of a crushed granite material.  Much more course than sand but not gravel either.  There are some spots where this stuff is deeper than others and I was careful to avoid them.  I suspect it is nowhere near as bad as sand but sand and I do not get along well so I was being cautious.

The trails are great and the scenery is very good.  There were a number of people out running, hiking, and riding and everyone was very polite and courteous.

I have very little climbing experience so I got a workout!!  Strava recorded only 1000′ of climbing but it sure felt like a lot more than that!

One aspect that was really fun was a few minutes of climbing and then a descent.  The descents were obviously not very long nor steep but gave a nice little breather.  Seems like most of the riding that I have done are miles and miles of up and then miles of down.  This rolling type of trail was a lot of fun but was not to confused with the flowing type of trails that some folks talk about.

Sometimes I start to thinking that I am getting pretty good on my bike.  Then I ride a trail that shows me how far that is from the truth.  This ride was no different.  The ride went pretty well until THE TIP-OVER!  Ya, hate those things.  I got to a section that had a concrete “pad” type of thing (like a big steel grate but made out of concrete).  The pad was on an incline, the dirt was washed away at the bottom, and covered with a coating of the crushed granite.  I hit it perfectly WRONG and spun out.  Of course, zero forward movement equals trouble. PLOP!  Onto the concrete and, of course, my forearm into the cactus on the side of the trail.  WowWEE!!  I felt that one!

Blood was flowing and I was rather surprised at the size of the needles that I was pulling out of my arm!

Most of the needles/thorns came out with a needle nose pliers once I got back to the car.  However; there was one that wasn’t so cooperative – there is always one, eh?!?  It was obvious as the skin was poking up and looked obviously wrong.  It took a while but digging with a needle, clipper, knife, and tweezer finally extracted the thing.  Of course, it came out without the sharp end so I suspect it is still in there. 

Nonetheless!  It was a good ride and great time!