The fifth Port Adelaide Cycling Club (PACC) cyclocross race was yesterday, Saturday 13 August 2011.  This time I raced in the B-grade, and had a good race.  I led the race for the first half of the first lap (yes, that would be a grand total of about four minutes), and finished seven of nineteen.  PACC has a great race animation, results and a race write-up over on the PACC CX Blog.

View the PACC CX 5, 2011 race in a larger map

This is the race course as captured by the new phone using Google My Tracks— the timing is a little off due to when I began and stopped the GPS.  See distance, time and speed details.

The Gunnar recently had a new King headset installed thanks to BMCR. The new headset is a huge improvement over the clunky, stiff and generally trashed 10-year-old Cane Creek. Not much else to say here, it’s a King headset and it does exactly what you’d expect.

Since the last race I also picked up new set of WTB ‘All Terrainasarus’ tyres from Road Rage. The new tyres are significantly taller and a little wider than the various SpeedMax Pros that I had been using over the last five years.  The extra volume allows for lower pressures, which helps grip, but the tread ‘packs-up’ and doesn’t shed mud very easily. As a result, the All Terrainasarus is marginal in wet and muddy conditions.

In all honesty, I got these tyres primarily for non-race use that includes commuting to and from singletrack on the road and towing the Burley up and down the beach paths.  The WTBs handle very well on the road, and the tread works well enough on the dirt.  The old SpeedMax Pros were probably a little more capable in dirt and mud, but they are squirmy and wear very quickly on the road.  Overall, the WTBs feel faster and smoother than the old tyres, but do give up some grip in the wet.

On to a few photos: