PSA: Using a wheel-on smart trainer with your cyclecross? Buy a indoor training tire!!

I bought the Wahoo Kickr Snap to use with Zwift and my cyclecross bike. I kept the existing tires because I wanted the least amount of effort.

It sounded like a bloody jet engine. The noise was SO LOUD. Louder than a vacuum and you could hear it in the halls of my apt complex.

Worse than that, my power readings were very low and not reflective of the energy I was putting in. Nothing fixed it: advanced spin down, regular spin down, alcohol wipes, messing with tension.

The true solution was to buy a $45 CAD indoor training tire. Not only did it make the entire setup dead silent (like actually, zero noise) but my power readings seem accurate and reflective of my output.

So some advice to noobies with cyclecross tires: buy the training tire. It’s absolutely worth it.