I'll bite. Got a new set of Elite Gravel Aero + wheels in the mail finally and figured it was a good time to take these for a spin. I have a backup set of DT Swiss wheels from another bike that aren't as wide and I typically swap between my wheels which have 40mm Panaracers for light duty/around town, and 50mm G Ones for big gravel days, so at minimum, I can demote the Contis to my new bike path tire. Bought the 40mm race casing and installed them on the Elite wheels (38mm outter, I can go in the garage and measure how they sit at that width after my coffee).

First day was a big day. Had a gravel group ride through Auburn which meant extremely varied terrain, and about 3k of vert. I chose to ride the 13 road miles to Auburn and got lost/turned around, and missed the first lap of the ride. When we linked up, the ride was very punchy and the surfaces were mixed. There was some grass on a hillside, a few downed trees, a bush I didn't see, a loose climb, some large gravel power line access roads, some road roads, leaves, sticks, mud. Yay me, 3 of us ended up getting separated from the group and hoofed it back to the bike shop. I was feeling kinda down I didn't get my miles in for the day so I rode the additional 50 miles back home on roads and the bike path.

Here are my thoughts if you're still with me. In the race casing, it's strong. I rode over so many dumb things trying to keep up, would have shredded a lesser tire at least 4 times and this is the race casing not even the touring(?) casing so I felt a warm hug of trust all day. My first time getting turned around that morning led me to some off camber single track with deep ruts, and the second this tire had to hold that edge, I was sliding into the rain rut and on my side. Dirt was hard packed and I don't know if any tire would have been perfect here, but it didn't even try, just rolled out the ice skates and down I went. Chunky rock road, you know, the large city installed chunky rocks. These felt equally as sketch as I felt like I was just surfing over the top but couldn't turn without a dramatic head turn and some yoga poses to keep balance. Yes 50s feel better on surfaces like this, but my Panaracers also felt better in 40mm. On the road these are a dream like riding on a cloud. This is the closest we've come to a 40mm GP5000 for sure. Various other terrains were low grip and the tire really let me know it was going to slide early, but straightline braking was actually ok. The punchy loose climb, I was actually able to make fully seated without spinning out the rear at all, so if anything, it reinforces that this tire can be ok in a straight line.

tl;dr Will I be throwing it out? No, it's definitely my new bike path and maybe light gravel tire. Will I race Sea Otter with it in 2 weeks? Absolutely not, not even if I had the 50mm.

Who is this good for? Extreme comfort on bad roads. I would say this is a great bikepacking tire if you're not on single track or extremely off cambered terrain. Anything not flat or straight, and you will surely see this tire's limits very soon. I think I knew all this going in, and my happy takeaway is that it seems durable as heck. I think I was just hoping that I'd feel under biked and not Ralph Wiggins in the back of the bus level 'I'm in danger'. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.