Vanessa Marie Robinson is a Brooklyn-based industrial designer who’s blog For The Love Of Bikes covers her multifaceted interests in all things cycling. She is typically found either riding in the city on a single-speed or training upstate on her road bike — year-round!
Last November I began bracing myself for some harsh winter weather and was eager to test out Fyxation’s Session 700 tires on rough commutes. Lo and behold, this has been a mild winter in NYC with only a couple light snowfalls to date.
I did at least manage to ride in some precipitation in the past few weeks and my impression was that tires these are strong and durable. They are functional city tires, not racing tires and not large knobby mountain biking tires, built to last on pavement, not ultra lightweight racing tires nor oversized knobby mountain biking tires.
The Session 700’s integrate Kevlar puncture protection and deep tread that envelopes the tire bead-to-bead.
They come in seven unique color options including: white, pink, green, brown, orange, and black with white sidewalls. If you have 70023 wheels you have can opt for either 28c or 35c. I tested out the 28c.
Sure, there are pros and cons with knobby vs. slick tires in the city. While slick bicycle tires (with the proper air pressure) repel glass, knobby tires provide a lot of traction and grip on slippery and uneven surfaces.
After a couple weeks riding the Session 700s I ran over a large broken glass bottle going over the Manhattan Bridge to test to see what would happen. I made it home just fine, but the next day there was a slow leak due to a large shard of glass.
It is impossible to say that any tire would have withstood that puncture but felt that the tires did their job by preventing an all out flat and resisting long enough for me to ride home.
The drawback I experienced with the Session 700’s was that they are so thick they didn’t stretch much, making them a challenge to put on my rims. On both my Mavic MA3 and Mavis Open Pro rims the tires took a lot of effort to get on. (This may or not be an issue depending on your wheel’s rims.) I also had to be really diligent about checking that the inner tube was not getting pinched before inflating in order to prevent a potential a snake bite puncture. However, once installed they were in place and I was riding with confidence on the roughest NYC streets in both wet and dry conditions.