Thursday, March 5, 2009

26 vs. 700

For a long time now I’ve believed that 700c wheels were larger in diameter than 26in and therefore created some slight advantage for speed or endurance. I understand that the rim itself actually does have a larger diameter (622mm vs. 559mm) but I finally got around to measuring the diameter from tire tread to tire tread and they’re nearly identical when comparing a 700x23 and a 26x2… both are about 68cm. The height of the 26x2 tire makes up the difference in rim diameter. When I switched to 26x1.5 for a brief while a couple years ago my gearing was thrown way up and my pedals started scraping – the 1.5 just wasn’t tall enough. There are probably still advantages to the 700 wheel – primarily weight savings, I suppose. Why this was my first thought as I woke up this morning I don’t know. Maybe because I slept with my ankle reflector on again…

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