If you are using the original knoblies that came with your mountain bike and are riding on the road, well all I can say is ditch them!!!!
As i previously mentioned, I fitted some Continental Double Fighter II tyres to my Kraken. I got back from shopping in Blackpool less than an hour ago and decided I needed to try the bike out with the new tyres. Just riding down the street I noticed the difference.
Noise – what noise. I could hear the chain set rattling on the cogs as I peddled. It took less energy to go faster too.
I took Manor road up to the sea front and had to stop for traffic so I could get across. Then road on the footpath over the bridge at the boating lake. Now this bit I am not putting down to the tyres, more to my general fitness levels. But I dropped only one cog to ride over the bridge, the last time I had to go onto the granny ring to crawl up it!! I may have been riding slightly faster giving me more momentum though 
I turned onto the sea front and just peddled. I got up to 15 mph which I managed to sustain for about 5 or 6 minutes and I still had a couple of gears to go if I wanted. On my last commute I managed 16 mph for 2 minutes tops.
As I turned off the sea front at Rossall Hospital, I noticed that I had been riding with a slight following wind – slight breeze it were, honest guv, it were blowing a gale on the way back though. Actually using Blackpool Airports METAR, its actual weather from around the time I was cycling 12 miles away, it gave a fair representation of the weather at Fleetwood:
EGNH 011550Z 32008KT 9999 FEW018 FEW025TCU 11/08 Q1010
Translated this means :
EGNH = Airfield ICAO code (Blackpool)
011550Z = Date time group for the observation 01 is 1st of month 1550Z is time using GMT as the reference = 4:50pm BST
32008KT = Wind direction and speed in Knots ie wind was blowing from 320 degrees almost North Westerly at 8 knots which is about 9 miles an hour.
9999 = Visibility, in this case 9999 means greater than 10km.
FEW018 FEW025TCU are the local cloud bases with the amount and height. Here there are a few clouds at 1800 feet and a few towering cumulous at 2500 feet.
11/08 is the temperature and dew point in degrees Celsius
Q1010 is the QNH or atmospheric pressure with respect to sea level in millibars.
Bet you wanted to know all that. If you do really want to understand aviation weather reports more, you can download you free copy of GETMET at the Met offices website. I digress.
So I had a tail wind pushing me along for about a mile and half. However it was a leveller on the way back, I had the 9mph wind against me, but managed to keep the speed up to around 9mph on the 2.4 miles back. I didn’t stop for a break either which I would have done on the knobblies. I think this was because I was able to peddle for a bit, rest then carry on only slowing down a couple of mph over a hundred feet or so, where as on the knobblies this would have been a more rapid deceleration with the corresponding push back up to speed.
With these new tyres on the bike I am a happier bunny I can tell you. Golf tomorrow and the weather looks fine. Monday is light rain showers but could be OK for another ride. I will try Poulton if it is, I need to take my old laptop motherboard to my mates for him to fix as a spare in case this one goes again
