Should you want to venture away from the tarmac, the oversized diameter of these Bontragers means you can do so with confidence and a little bit of comfort. Overall riding is easier, less stressful as you aren't worn down by constant road vibration, and you don't have to concentrate continually about the road surface and what you might need to avoid, ensuring you're less fatigued, both mentally and physically. And they made holes, drains and craters a little less of a pinch-flat worry. That's not to say they produced an awesome magic-carpet ride over the moonscape of standard country lanes, but they handily cut out a significant amount of tedious road buzz and bump without divorcing you from the road characteristics underneath you, which is important. And yet they don't feel noticeably slower. The R3 Hard-Case Lite 32s are a noticeably more comfortable tyre than the 25s they replaced – by quite some margin, as you might expect. And on a more tangible level you'll waste less time trying to weave around holes and debris looking for the less puncture-prone line. Rolling resistance is less, and as you're not getting beaten about so much by the road surface, especially if you drop to a lower pressure that a fatter tyre will allow, you will stay fresher and stronger for longer. You could argue, and some have, that over the course of a long ride over crappy roads a fatter tyre is going to be more efficient and faster overall than a slimmer tyre.
There's also a TLR – tubeless ready – version if you and your wheels are up to speed with that sort of technology.
The R3 pumps up true to stated size on the rim, and yet both tyres came in slightly lighter than the published 290g weight at 281g and 283g.
BONTRAGER RACE X LITE FULL
The R3 Hard-Case Lite comes in 23, 25, 28 and 32mm widths, and the full fat version here is something to behold, turning your road bike (if the rubber will fit) into something like a SuperMoto bike, although sideways drifts are not required on every corner, however tempting.
The Bontrager R3 Hard-Case Lite 700x32c pushes the plump limit to the point where once upon a time it might have been considered a humourously slick cyclo-cross tyre. Wider road bike tyres are gaining an almost unstoppable momentum as people discover they can be both fast and comfortable, and with the emergence of the endurance road bike genre, Rubenesque road rubber is only going to become more common as bikes are designed to fit fat slicks.