Kenda Small Block 8 MTB/Cyclocross tires UPDATE # 2:

Okay, it’s taken me a while to get to this, but…the weekend mentioned below was at least as nasty as forecast, if not worse.  Racers were walking on downhills; it was so slick that it was thoroughly dangerous at times.  So…how did thing go?

Saturday, it rained during the entire race.  Rotten, miserable, but at least it wasn’t 34 degrees…more like 44.  And the Kenda Small Block 8s performed VERY well.  I was running with the bike in the same sections racers with more mud-specific tires were running, and riding the same areas they were.  The mud was loose and slimy, and cleared out of the tread reasonably well.  This was a big weekend, a Verge series race, the competition was fierce, yet I was able to hold my lines, get some great accelerations whenever the course flattened out, and have a solid midpack finish.  Yet again, the Small Block 8 outperformed!

Sunday was a different kettle of fish.  Same course, rain stopped in the middle of the night, and the mud was STICKY.  Horrible, rotten stuff that filled up every crevice on your bike.  And the downhills were even worse than the day before, particularly since they’d reversed the course and what had been a difficult, twisty uphill became a hair-raising, horrifying downhill.  I took a practice lap on my ‘cross bike, looked at my mud-packed derailleur, and pulled my SS mountain bike off the car.  Heavy it is, but…what the heck.  So, I raced it.  I still don’t know if it was the right decision…that weight was a killer in the  running sections, which was about half the course.  But, no mechanical issues, and I was one of the few who was actually able to ride that downhill. End result, best finish of the year for me, so…no complaints.  However, this is where the Kendas finally showed their Achilles heel.  In that kind of thick mud, the closely packed blocks simply couldn’t clear, and I lost traction and gained weight.  I found myself riding through every puddle on the course to try to loosen the stuff up.  Riders with more conventional mud tires were having their own problems, but nowhere near as bad as mine.

Final analysis:  Kenda markets the Small Block 8 as a tire for hardpacked, fast rolling conditions, and it’s superb when the riding’s like that.  In addition, they’re incredibly good in wet grass, and surprisingly good in soft mud and sand.  When things get really deep and sticky, they show what they’re designed for.  Next year, I’ll race two different tires again…but my “year of Kenda” was fun, my handling skills and confidence improved, and my finishes in the mud were surprisingly good.  Hmmm…I may have to look through their catalog and see what they’ve got for a deeper tread ‘cross tire…

Kenda Small Block 8 MTB/Cyclocross tires: UPDATE #1:

As promised, I finally got a cyclocross race in last weekend on the Kenda Small Block 8 tires.  It was a cool day, frost on the ground before the start…nice, slick conditions.  MY condition wasn’t so good…between work and a nasty cold, I was way out of my normal training routine.  Well…a midpack finish made me very happy, and I can credit the Kendas for some of that.

First, setup.  After playing with a number of different tire pressures, I found out that these tires like a LOT of pressure.  Specifically, for my 180 pound body, they liked 60 psi.  As I tried lower pressures, they started to get squirrely.  At the higher pressures, they roll smoothly on hardpack, and then when you start to turn the soft knobs on the side BITE.  The acid test for if you’re using your cornering grip is, I kid you not, that you can hear the grass starting to tear; I’d never heard it.  Previous tires either didn’t let me feel confident enough to push the bike that hard in the turns, or slid out before I got to that point.  With these, it’s easy to both hear and feel that, well before the wheel actually slides out.

So, how did it play out?  Armed with that knowledge, I carried more speed into corners and stayed off the brakes.  Toward the end of the race, there were two people that I’d been chasing…both younger and slimmer than I was.  In the road sections, they walked away from me…but in the grass, I came around them, stayed away and gained time on a slippery climb, and they never caught me again.  As anyone who has raced ‘cross knows, it’s stupidly painful…but it’s a whole lot more fun when you can chase someone down like that!  And, I truly don’t think I could have done it with my previous setup…I wouldn’t have dared to push my bike that hard (just as THEY couldn’t push theirs as hard as I did, even though they were clearly more fit than I was).

This weekend, it’s going to rain…the forecast says “wind driven rain”.  Perfect miserable ‘cross conditions.  And…okay, this is NOT a tire that’s intended for mud.  But, you know…I wouldn’t have thought they’d be good on wet grass, either, and I was wrong.  I’ll run ’em, and see what  happens!

Kenda Small Block 8 MTB/Cyclocross tires: The Original Story:

Okay, I’ll admit that I have a cranky streak.  If you’ve been in the East at all this summer, you know that it’s rained constantly.  So, what kind of jerk would test a tire that’s designed for dry, hardpack conditions in the slop we’ve got?  Yup, that jerk would be me.

The Kenda Small Block 8 bears John Tomac’s signature.  If you’re as old as I am, you’ll know that Tomac is one of America’s greatest MTB racers, with a long career in a sport where most fast racers have broken too many bones to keep competing for long.  So…was this another marketing ploy?  Did he stick his name on the tires to get paid, and did Kenda stick his name on the tires to sell a few more?  Only one way to tell.

I put the tires on my Raleigh XXIX singlespeed and headed out for the windiest singletrack around.  Immediately two things were clear.  First, these suckers are FAST.  If you’re on dry, smooth terrain, they roll like road tires, feeling confident and controlled.  They’re also exceptionally light, beating my benchmark Maxxis Ignitors.  So far, so good…sounds like a nice tire for Arizona, where it doesn’t rain 30 days out of 31 (did I mention that the weather has been really rotten in the East this summer?).  The bad news for Kenda is that the second half of my singletrack is a lot muddier at the best of times…so I planned on a nice sedate pace and keeping my heartrate down.

Well…it didn’t quite work out as planned.  I can’t tell you that these things dug in as well in mud as the Ignitors, but I can definitely say that I was blown away by how well they did.  They actually handled deep mud pretty well; the toughest test for them was wet clay, where they got VERY squirrely and forced me to back off.  Ah, tradeoffs…light, stupidly fast on the dry stuff, okay in moderate mud, mediocre in wet clay.  I’d make them my top choice for any race that wasn’t a total mud bog; I gained enough in the faster section to more than make up for what I lost in the sticky stuff.

But wait…the Kenda catalog says that they make these things for ‘cross, too!  Yeah, I had to try those…the only thing more fun than cyclocross is…oh, never mind.  Now, this is the wrong time of year for ‘cross, and there aren’t any courses set up, but some damp grass and a steep front lawn will do the trick for testing them, as long as my lovely significant other doesn’t notice me making muddy paths on it.

And…surprise…these things LIKE wet grass!  As I pushed them hard in corners, I could feel them gripping, and feel them start to give way in time to let up.  That’s all you can ask for…if you can tell that you’re about to go down BEFORE you go down, that’s just plain sweet.  I raced Hutchinson Bulldogs last year and loved them…but these may be a better all around tire (for less money, if you’re a cheapskate).  More to come when I actually get a chance to try them in a race…