Back at the end of '05 I had bought a pair of Continental GP 4000. I heard they had good rolling resistance and decent puncture protection. They didn't have the Kevlar belt but instead used what they call a vectran which saves in weight and is (supposedly) stronger than steel. I must admit that they do have a good ride to them. Although they weren't as fast as some other tires I rode, they were good enough for me to race on. I had put a couple hundred miles on them when one morning I flatted. But not just the tube, my front tire split across the silica tread. I was lucky that it wasn't too big and I put a boot patch and rode the 7 miles home.
I got kind of disgusted with the tire and put the second one on the side and bought a pair of Michelin Pro II for the P3. These are very nice tires and I like them a lot better than the GP 4000 I've got a close to a thousand on them and have yet to even flat them once. I finally put the second GP4000 on my road bike along with a Bontarager Lite that I had in the garage. I have about a thousand on these when the GP split. This time it wasn't just across the top tread but also down one sidewall. Again I was lucky and was only 1 1/2 miles from home. I had been riding up some of the ridges around the area and was going to go out to Waikiki and back for some high cadence work. No patch could salvage this blowout. I'm just glad it didn't happen on one of my descents.
I must admit that in both cases I ran over something. I looked but couldn't find anything. Yet I've rode over objects before and never had a tire split on me. After my first incident, I read some posts that others had the GP 4000 split on them also. It could be coincidence but my luck with these have been on the "not so good" side. I think I'll go shopping for another pair of Pro II.
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