Got in a good ride today. As an experiment I decided to ride the exact same route I did last Sunday which was on Cyclocross tires. Those tires had a tremendous amount of wear on them after just a couple of rides so I have put on the Kenda Small Block 8 which is what I have used in the past. I thought the cross tires would roll a lot faster and be lighter which would increase my speed, but last weekends ride made me wonder if that was really the case. So I got the Kenda's on got on my way. It was pretty chilly today but at least the sun was out which always makes for a good ride. I had on quite a few layers and was drenched when I got home, but I was warm during the whole ride. So last week the route I did took me about 4 hours and 15 minutes. This week was good. I left around 11:30am and had a tailwind for the first half of the ride. Unfortunately the first half is where all the climbing is so I don't benefit as much as if it was on the 2nd half (like last week). I didn't check my time at all during the ride but about 3/4 of the way through I could really feel myself slowing down with a combination of the wind and fatigue. When I finally got home I was really surprised to see that I had finished at 3:25 which means I did the ride in 3 hours and 55 minutes which is 20 minutes faster than last weekend. So I think the Kenda's are definitely faster than the cross tires. I think that makes up a large portion of the time difference....maybe I was feeling better as well although I didn't feel like it. So the Kenda's will be staying on now, maybe I'll save the cross tires for the Paris to Ancaster race....but then again the Kenda's would probably still be faster.

Steve