Table of Contents
- You Only Notice a Tire When It Fails
- Factory-Fresh Waste
- Pen Pals
- The Accountant of Wear
- Built to Last
- When Was the Last Time You Thanked Your Tires?
- Flat-Proof
- A Tire Has a Footprint
- Materials? Health!
- Generation Marathon
- Conclusion
Abrojo. Abre ojo. Eyes open! Mine weren’t open wide enough. Now I’m standing at the roadside, patching and swearing. Ruta 40, Argentina; somewhere between San Rafael and Mendoza.
Abrojo is a plant. Its English name, puncture vine, leaves little doubt about its intentions. It is a cold-blooded rubber killer. Its target: tires. Car tires, motorbike tires, truck tires … Abrojo isn’t picky. Its thorn-covered seeds always land on the road with at least one spike pointing towards the rubber, like a medieval caltrop. The result: a perfect puncture angle with optimum lateral support. Kudos to evolution.
Ideally, abrojo catches a lift for a few hundred kilometres across the pampas in the tire of a goat trailer, before starting a new life somewhere in the dust. But the botanical landmine didn’t account for bike travellers. Bicycle tires are simply too thin. Clean puncture. Air gone. Ten metres later, the journey ends. Tough luck, abrojo.
That was in 2011.
You Only Notice a Tire When It Fails.
Before my trip, I’d thought about tires for the first time in my life. Rubber compounds, mileage, puncture protection … In everyday cycling, those are abstract concepts. The worst that can happen is a walk to the next patch of phone signal. But in Tierra del Fuego, those patches are few and far between, and the idea of Amazon delivering a new tire to Caleta Yungay within 24 hours was even more absurd back then than it is today. Out here, puncture protection may be the difference between drinking a Quilmes in the sunset, and being eaten by a puma after dark. Worth doing a little research, then.
Rather than the usual bitter trench warfare between fanatical brand loyalists, I found a rare sense of agreement in the cycling forums. Across the entire touring bike community, the tire consensus was clear: Schwalbe Marathon. The only thing people argued passionately about was which Schwalbe Marathon. Supreme, Extreme, XR … or perhaps last year’s model was better? People worshipped high mileage figures, analysed rubber compounds, and celebrated new tread patterns.
I went for the Schwalbe Marathon Extreme. SnakeSkin sidewalls and KevlarGuard puncture protection. No “Plus” layer. Saving weight and all that.
4,000 kilometres later, I’m cursing myself and the KevlarGuard. Myself, because tire weight would have made absolutely no difference with 20 kilos of luggage. The KevlarGuard, because it lost its battle with the abrojo. Then again, perhaps it had already won countless others. Who knows? A tire has the misfortune of only being noticed when it fails. A bit like a goalkeeper. Judged by the mistakes, not the saves.
The damage report so far: seven broken spokes, one dead shifter, and a snapped pedal. Plus encounters with people whose bearings had spat out their balls, whose luggage racks had fallen off, and whose frames had buckled under the stress. But not a single puncture for me – the tire had made plenty of saves.
I look at the Marathon Extreme with renewed appreciation and pack away the pump. Shortly afterwards, I’m swearing again.
Abrojo rarely comes alone.
Factory-Fresh Waste
Fifteen years later, tires catch up with me again. This time, though, not on Ruta 40, but in Reichshof. I’m standing outside the headquarters of Ralf Bohle GmbH, better known by their brand name: Schwalbe.
There are EV chargers out front, a rooftop garden with raspberries, and a boules court. Charging your car is free. If you cycle to work, showering counts as working time, and twice a week, a mechanic looks after employees’ bikes in the workshop. Add to that group rides, table tennis tournaments, and a canteen that grows its own vegetables.
The building itself was constructed to the latest environmental standards. No bonded joints, exposed service lines, everything designed to be dismantled and repaired. Almost everything is recyclable.
Inside: plenty of light, good coffee, and a brand experience space. Steffen Jüngst, Team Lead for Communication, guides me through the history of Ralf Bohle GmbH. In the 1920s, Ralf Bohle began exporting bicycle parts to Asia. By the 1960s, the flow of goods had reversed. The parts now came from Asia. Imports instead of exports.
The bicycle industry was in crisis. In Germany, the future belonged to the car. The bicycle was losing relevance – and the bicycle tire had never had much to begin with.
From today’s perspective, many tires from the early 1970s look like hazardous waste fresh from the factory. Heavy cotton casings, crude rubber compounds, poor puncture protection. Add huge manufacturing tolerances, limited grip, and a different understanding of roundness. Things were not good.
Bohle spotted an opportunity, used its connections in Asia, and made the leap from distributor to manufacturer in 1973. Under the Schwalbe name, it began producing bicycle tires together with its Korean partner Hung-A; Not in Reichshof, but in Korea.
Today, Schwalbe sells around 25 million bicycle tires a year, plus inner tubes, rim tape, and sealant.
Pen Pals
One milestone in this success story is a model that, for a time, was better known than the brand itself: the Marathon. The Schwalbe Marathon. With the Marathon, a wear part became something people tell stories about. And its own story is so good that Schwalbe would have had to invent it if it hadn’t actually happened.
Product development usually begins with a specification sheet, a user profile, and clearly defined targets. The Marathon began with a letter. Or rather, with a whole stack of letters.
In 1981, vocational school teacher Wolfgang Reiche from Bremen wrote to more than 80 bicycle and component manufacturers. He asked them to provide equipment for a round-the-world bike trip. Only one replied: Schwalbe. The company supplied Reiche and his travel companion, Gudrun Brardt, with tires.
Without Instagram, the story should really have ended there. Reiche had no followers. No reach. But he had something far better: a sharp eye, an endless obsession with detail, and the meticulous nature of an accountant.
The Accountant of Wear
Reiche systematically documents how the tires perform on different surfaces, records punctures, and logs their mileage. An accountant of wear. At Schwalbe, the product developers realise they’ve struck gold. They have the chance to develop a tire not in the lab, but out on the road. While other manufacturers rely on simulations, the developers in Reichshof suddenly have test diaries from Patagonia and the Andes landing on their desks.
Over the course of four years, Schwalbe sends the round-the-world cyclists prototypes with different rubber compounds and tread patterns. In return, they receive detailed real-world documentation. After 73,000 kilometres, the journey comes to an end. In 1986, the first Schwalbe Marathon hits the market. From day one, it is the round-the-world tire, and Schwalbe carefully cultivates that image. Reiche’s touring bike, fitted with the first Marathon, now stands proudly in their brand experience space, patina and all. Reiche is something like the Big Bang of the Marathon myth. But a brand can’t survive on world travellers alone.
Fortunately for Schwalbe, the tire’s reputation quickly spread to other terrain. After all, if it works in the Amazon basin, it should be more than capable of handling the urban pothole jungle. Silk Road or main road – Marathon is Marathon. While cycling novices excitedly discuss groupsets, experienced touring cyclists and extreme commuters glance at the tire sidewalls. A Marathon sends a clear message: this person doesn’t just ride a bike. They ride far.
There are now 12 Marathon model variants, for ebikes, city bikes, MTBs, gravel bikes, and, of course, touring. Each one carries the promise of exceptional reliability. But is that enough to turn a tire into a legend?
Part of the Story
Barreal, Argentina. The bottom bracket has given up. It creaks as if begging to be put out of its misery in the general waste bin. But bike trips play by different rules. Out here, a bottom bracket is a rare commodity. Throwing it away isn’t an option. A mechanic brings it back to life, giving it a second chance with plenty of grease and care.
On a journey, wear parts take on meaning. They become part of the story. Companions. They deserve attention – tres included. The Marathon Extremes have now clocked up 5,000 kilometres over a material-munching mix of every imaginable kind of gravel and rough asphalt. Add plenty of luggage and rarely a properly checked tire pressure. The front tire still looks great; the rear has seen better days. I swap them around and pick stones out of the tread. They’ve still got some distance left in them.
Built to Last
Longevity is at the heart of the Marathon family, but it’s all relative. A sporty gravel tire is already considered durable if it lasts 5,000 kilometres. Soft downhill tires can be worn out after just a few hundred. A Marathon lasts longer. Much longer.
I meet Marathon Product Manager and Developer Michael Rudolph, who takes me deep into the world of compounds. Compounds are rubber mixtures. They form the tire tread, and they have the biggest influence when it comes to longevity. All Marathon compounds are based on natural rubber. Additives are mixed in to influence grip, rolling resistance, and resistance to aging. And then there’s carbon black.
Behind that rather polished term lies something far less glamorous: essentially, industrially produced soot. It’s something Michael would happily do without. Carbon black is found in every black tread and is crucial for abrasion resistance. A tire simply doesn’t work without it. Unfortunately. Because carbon black has an environmental impact. Schwalbe is therefore looking for new ways to deal with it. More on that later.
But even with the addition of carbon black, tire development comes with a classic trade-off. Hard compounds resist wear for longer; soft compounds offer more grip.
The Schwalbe Marathon has the advantage that weight isn’t right at the top of the design brief. While race tires are put on a diet, a Marathon can afford a few extra grams of compound. A thicker tread means a longer service life. The Marathon is deliberately a little more substantial than its performance-focused gravel or MTB siblings.
When Was the Last Time You Thanked Your Tires?
Just as important for longevity is the casing – the tire’s textile skeleton. The number, strength, and overlap of the fabric threads determine how much a tire deforms under load, how it rolls, and ultimately how evenly the tread wears. The tread pattern, by contrast, has far less influence on mileage. Even the more heavily treaded Marathon models are designed so that the offset tread blocks form a continuous, low-wear contact surface.
Even so, it’s difficult to predict how many kilometres a tire will last. Surface, system weight, riding style, tire pressure, and braking behaviour all play a role. But UV radiation, ozone, and temperature also affect the ageing process. Depending on how it’s used, the same tire might be worn out after 13,000 kilometres, or after 30,000.
Just before the exit of the brand experience space, Michael stops to pull a battered tire veteran out of the corner. Attached to it is a homemade PowerPoint graphic featuring a globe, a swallow, and the words: “40,000 kilometres. 0 punctures. Thank you for the great quality.” Not every Marathon rider sends their worn-out tire back to Reichshof. But some really do. Perhaps longevity can’t be measured in kilometres after all, but in the fact that people will thank a tire.
Flat-Proof
Alongside longevity, Schwalbe has built another promise into the Marathon’s DNA: puncture protection. And once again, the story sounds almost too good to be true.
A local brewery had grown tired of the countless punctures suffered by its company bikes. It approached Schwalbe and asked for a tire that could withstand broken glass. The developers put their heads together and came up with SmartGuard: an additional rubber layer between the tread and casing, designed to resist shards, thorns, and even drawing pins. All “Plus” models come equipped with this technology. Schwalbe itself calls them flat-proof.
A few abrojo seeds would put that claim to the test.
A Tire Has a Footprint
Frankfurt – Madrid. Madrid – Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires – Ushuaia. That was my route in 2011. By plane. Only then did I get on the bike. As a bike traveller, it’s easy to imagine yourself on the right side of the sustainability debate. But bike trips leave their mark, too. Not just through the CO₂ emissions generated on the way to the starting point, but also as fine particles of tire wear left behind on asphalt and gravel.
Compared with the global tire wear caused by cars and trucks, the amount is negligible. But that doesn’t mean the issue can be ignored. A product that stands for sustainable mobility like few others should keep its environmental footprint as small as possible.
You can tell that the team in Reichshof are aware of this before you even step inside the building. The rooftop garden, the charging stations, the home-grown vegetables … But the ambition doesn’t stop at the façade.
Materials? Health!
Bicycle tires contain environmentally harmful substances such as synthetic rubber, plasticisers, and carbon black. Schwalbe’s goal is to reduce the proportion of these materials, wherever possible, to zero.
That’s why Michael prefers to talk about material health rather than sustainability. A tire shouldn’t just be produced using as few resources as possible. It should also be harmless to the people who fit it, ride it, and store the bike in their home. After all, perhaps one day the kids might decide to test the puncture protection with their baby teeth.
One element is the compound itself. In recent years, Schwalbe has increased the proportion of natural rubber in the tread. As a result, the “Green Marathon” line is 99% free from harmful substances.
At the same time, the team in Reichshof has built a unique recycling system. Dealers collect tires and inner tubes from all brands in recycling boxes. The boxes are then taken to Schwalbe’s partner Pyrum, in Saarland. There, the materials are shredded and converted back into usable raw materials in a special reactor. One of them is recycled carbon black, which is then sent to Schwalbe’s factory to be used in new tires.
Generation Marathon
Longevity, puncture protection, environmental responsibility. These are all important attributes. They explain why people buy a tire – but not why they grow attached to it. I take one final lap through the brand experience space. Wolfgang Reiche in the early 1980s. The bicycle’s return to urban life in the 1990s. Ebikes. Sustainability. In truth, the Marathon doesn’t tell the story of a tire at all. It tells the story of the bicycle. Every generation asked something new of it. And surprisingly often, the Marathon had the right answer. Perhaps that’s its real secret. It didn’t merely move with the times. More often than not, it was one step ahead.
Conclusion
The Schwalbe Marathon is a cycling icon. But it didn’t become a legend through race wins or marketing. Nor through a magical rubber compound or enchanted threads in its casing. It became part of the story because generations of cyclists have lived their own stories on it – and with it.
Click here to visit Schwalbe.
Words: Nils Hofmeister Photos: Nils Hofmeister
