Boy am I slow...

[mimitabby]

Jolt, the tire article wasn't talking about underinflated tires.
None of those tires were down to 35 lbs of pressure!
When tires are as low as yours were, there is a LOT of resistance.

I have tires that had directions right on the package for how many pounds of pressure per pounds of
weight of the rider. It took me months of trying to convince DH to leave my tires at 90 instead of blowing them up to 120 which is the max.
Did you notice the other thing in the article? the faster tires were not the 23cm ones; they were the 28 cm ones!

and Karen, right on. Ride your own ride. But don't make it harder on yourself with squishy tires.

[Jolt]

Jolt, the tire article wasn't talking about underinflated tires.
None of those tires were down to 35 lbs of pressure!
When tires are as low as yours were, there is a LOT of resistance.

I have tires that had directions right on the package for how many pounds of pressure per pounds of
weight of the rider. It took me months of trying to convince DH to leave my tires at 90 instead of blowing them up to 120 which is the max.
Did you notice the other thing in the article? the faster tires were not the 23cm ones; they were the 28 cm ones!

and Karen, right on. Ride your own ride. But don't make it harder on yourself with squishy tires.

Well, it will be interesting to see how much of a difference there is with more air in the tires the next time I make this trip (the weather has been rotten today and is expected to be equally rotten tomorrow, so that probably won't be for a couple of days). Maybe I got confused with that article because they said higher pressures weren't necessarily faster; you're right, that probably doesn't apply to ridiculously underinflated tires like I had! Having seen that article though, I think I'll just stick with the 38's for the time being rather than switch to something like 32's as I was starting to consider doing. If it won't make much of a difference for speed, I might as well have the wider ones that will handle sand, gravel and potholes better.