I took the Eriksen out for a Sunday morning ride with a couple friends.  Four hours, 65km, 20° and sunny. Pushing a pair of 770g 2.35 Ignitors around for four hours is a ‘job of work‘.

I wanted something more appropriate and mid-90s-ish than the minimally-spoked and semi-aero Shimano RS20 wheels that were on the purple mid-90s Trek. I was unable to find Mavic rainbow-anodized rims with rainbow-Ti spokes and splatted-painted hubs, so I did the next best thing, double the number of spokes. Actually, the more I think about it, the next best thing is not more spokes, but three spokes.  Anyway, what I did get was a set of 36h Mavic Open Pro rims and Ultegra 6600 hubs with DT Swiss Comp spokes and Pro Lock nipples. While it won’t necessarily make up for the extra 66 spokes, the Open Pros do have rainbow-effect stickers that shift from turquoise to violet. In my mind, this falls squarely in the ‘mid-90s-ish’ category.

These wheels are used, but only three months old, built locally and in near-perfect condition. The original owner swapped these wheels off of a cyclocross bike for something tubeless. In any case, I paid less for the wheelset than the hubs alone would have cost new.  I was in the process of gathering parts to build some ‘mid-90s-ish’ wheels when I found these, so I now have a couple of extra Shimano 105 and 600 hubs.  Assuming I can find a nice matching hub for one of them, I’ll likely build some wheels anyway.

As I mentioned, these wheels have a lot of spokes, double the number of spokes that the Shimano RS20 have (36/36 vs 16/20). For those who are good at math(s), feel free to check my arithmetic.  Anyway, despite the 36 extra spokes, the Open Pros only weight 120g more than the RS20s (1980g vs 1860g). I suppose a set of 28/32 spoke Open Pros would have been a little lighter, but not very ‘mid-90s-ish’, and not light enough to matter.

For those concerned about the fate of the Shimano RS20s, don’t worry. They replaced the orignal Alex DA16/generic hub wheels on Rachel’s Sirrus, and cut 460g (that’s slightly over one pound) of weight.  Again, with the use of math(s) you’ll realize that those Alex DA16-based wheels tipped the scales at an authoritative 2320g (slightly under 350 pounds).

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: