Huron Park
After the disappointment of having to turn back because of the mud at the WCC trails yesterday, I headed down the city trails to Huron Park this morning on my cross bike. The trails there are sandy and bone dry. There is about an hour of riding there. The trails are much like you find at Paris-Ancaster: fast and swoopy - good fun! The main entrance is off Trillium. This map shows all the little trails as well:
Having never ridden these trails, and new to the whole cross bike idea; are the trails in there ride-able on a cross bike with 700x28 touring tires mounted? (I've got my cross bike set up for commute duty at the moment)
Should I take the time to change my tires back to the 700x35's before hitting these trails?
I'm finding that changing these tires is much more of a PITA than a 26" MTB tire...
Cheers,
Jeff
You will definitely want the 35's. Soil is loose and sandy.
Thanks for the info, now I'll just need to hone my technique for changing these tires or buy/build a second set of wheels...
Cheers,
Jeff
Hi Jeff,
I used to always fight to loosen the brake cables in order to get my cyclocross wheels off. Then, I discovered that it's easier to let the air out of the tires before removing (or installing) the wheels and leave the brakes alone. I don't know if this is your problem or not, but this simple trick got me to less than 10 minutes per tire.
I added the Huron trail information to the site. It's under "Other Trails". Let me know how you like the trail, I'm looking forward to trying it myself.
Cheers,
Scott
Hi Scott,
Not to say that I won't also adopt your method, it sounds like a good idea, but it's not my brakes that are the nuisance, it's the part about getting the tire bead back over the rim when re-installing. They are so tight that I broke some cheapy tire levers when changing the tires the first time, had to break out the trusty blue ones from Park Tools to get the job done. I should have just started with them but they were 5 feet away in another seat bag. ;)
I guess I'm just too used to the ease at which most MTB tires can be changed.
I'm not sure when I'll get to these trails but they are in my future for sure, I'll report back once I get out there.
Cheers,
Jeff
I had some Vittoria tires that were incredibly hard to mount. I switched to a smaller inner tube size and used lots of talcum powder on the tubes. I found the talcum powder gets on the bead of the tire and seems to help the bead work its way onto the rim. Also, as you're mounting the tire make sure the bead - on the opposite side of the wheel that you are trying to work on - is pushed into the center of rim. I actually stopped running the Vittoria tires because I didn’t want to get stranded trying to change one on the side of the road.
Vittoria "Zaffiro" tires, that's the culprit. What a bugger to change, mounting to a Mavic Aksium wheelset...
My setup was Vittoria Open Corsa EVO CX 320 tpi on Fulcrum Racing 5 rims - nice riding tire but brutal to install. Switched to Continental Grand Prix 4000 tires and they can be mounted with reasonable coaxing - even at the side of the road.
Thanks Mike,
Could you point out where to park, and where the best trail entrance is?