In April I put a pair of Conti GP 4000s ii 28mm tyres on, I ran them for just shy of 5000km, without a single flat. Even with the broken glass paving of Dutch cycle paths, Belgian "roads", French Pavé, and some off roading.
So just before my planned tour I put a new set of the same tyres on, loaded the bike with a very light touring setup, and headed for Hell.
I had 2 punctures in the first 30km. Which set the precedent. Over the next 600km I had 8 flats. I had to write off an outer as I couldn't fish out the remaining bit of scandi flint, I put on a specialised All Condition Armadillo on the back. This got me the final 800km to Hell without any more flats, but when I got back to Denmark, the Armadillo had it's first flat, and at the same time I noticed a side wall failure on the front conti, with the tube sticking out. All in all I wrote off 2 gp4000s in under 1500km.
Given the faff of fixing flats, I'm seriously considering going tubeless. But I have reservations[1]. Primarily I'm looking at what happened to Bjorn in this years TCR[2], if I'm in the middle of nowhere and can't magic up a compressor, am I looking at basically having to fall back to a normal clincher with a tube? If I've gone for a tubeless rim, can I put a normal clincher in there as a get me moving again fix?
I'm looking at things from an ultra-racing point of view. What failure modes should I be aware of before deciding on tubeless?
Any reason I shouldn't go tubeless for this sort of use case? If I don't go tubeless, what fast clinchers would people suggest for racing? I'm kinda losing faith in the gp4000s.
J
[1] Yes this is yet another geek ponders failure modes thread
[2] For those who didn't follow, Bjorn had big failure on his rear tyre at CP3, he had a new outer, he managed to save the sealant from the original tyre, but then had issues getting the new to fit, until he managed to find a compressor by magic from the caretaker of a hotel.