As mentioned in this blog post, we recently bought my wife a bike trainer.  This means we can now ride and train together in our basement.

The trainer we purchased was a Wahoo Kickr Snap, which is a ‘wheel on’ bike trainer.  This means that the rear wheel stays on the bike, when fitted to the trainer.  The tire on the rear wheel, sits against a roller, which drives a flywheel, that in turn provides the resistance while riding.

Today, I installed a special trainer tire onto the rear wheel of my wife’s bike.  These trainer tires are specially designed for use with wheel on bike trainers.  Why would you need a special tire for this purpose?  There are several reasons.

The first reason is heat.  Riding on rollers generates a lot heat in a tire.  Regular bike tires are not designed to resist this kind of heat.  As a result, regular bike tires degrade quickly and start to leave lots of residue on the rollers.  Prolonged use of regular tires on the trainer, also means they become unsuitable for riding outside, and must be thrown away.  Trainer tires have much better heat resistance built into them.

In addition to heat resistance, trainer tires are also designed to be much quieter.  The tire manufacturer uses a special rubber compound, that helps reduce noise.  It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but when you are on your bike for a long time, the whine of a tire against the roller, gets very annoying.

Trainer tires are also very durable.  A single tire should last a couple of years on the trainer.  This is much longer than a regular tire, which saves you money.  That durability also comes with extra ‘grip’.  This ‘grip’ provides extra resistance and means your tire won’t slip on the roller, when you are really pushing hard.

Finally, trainer tires come in crazy colors.  Not a huge advantage but they do look cool and who can resist something cool looking!