Yearly Archives: 2015

Cross Racing Oklahoma Style

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On Saturday I raced the Hurtland Cross in downtown Tulsa Oklahoma.  I’ve raced cross a few times in Oklahoma, mainly in Tulsa.  And it can be all over the place, weather and courses.  I’ve raced mainly on dirt at 90’s and I’ve raced in 3 inches of frozen slush at below 32.  Saturday, it was great cross weather, 40’s and blustery.

The Hurtland race is carry over from the Tulsa Tough Criterium series.  I’m not sure what the brainstorm was to come up with the cross race, but they did a super job for their first cross race.  I believe they had over 300 riders in their event, which is pretty great for an Oklahoma cyclocross.

I raced both the masters and Elite races.  I usually only race Elite races, but felt I really need more time racing cross, plus there was super prize lists for all masters categories.  I sort of felt like a cherry picker, but I do qualify by age.  Anyway, I did progress in my “cyclocross comeback” by racing twice.

The early race was at 11:30.  It was in the lower 40’s and windy.  I didn’t really have the energy to warm up too much.  I rationalized this by saying the masters race was really warm up for the Elite race at 3, which was partially true.

The masters race went pretty good.  They was a $100 holeshot prize, which is more than winning a local race normally.  I won the holeshot and just kept the speed up.  Nothing really to report here other than I found it hard to ride easy, like not race pace, when I was racing, even though I was a long ways ahead and knew that I had another hour race to do soon.  I wonder why that is?  One notable thing was late in the race, I was coming up behind some guys and I’m not sure if it was a bug, or piece of leaf or what, but I inhaled something into my lungs, or maybe just my throat.  I coughed for the last half lap of the race and never seemed to dislodge the object. I still feel it in there, which is maybe just psychosomatic or scarring or something, but I’m still trying to get it out.

Anyway, I had a couple hours before the Elite race.  I went back to the van and took a nap in the sun.  I’m not sure if I actually slept, but when I got up about an hour before the race, I felt toasted.  Surprisingly so.  I was foggy in the head and tired.  But when I got on my bike, I felt pretty good pedaling.  I went over to the Brady district and had a double espresso and was ready to go.

I was lined up at the back of the 40+ guys at the start, plus I missed my pedal a couple times, so was buried turning onto the grass.  But I knew I had no chance to win.  Tristan Uhl, which was top ten in Louisville a couple weeks ago, was on form.  Plus, Jacob Lasley, Joseph Schmalz and a couple other guys that would be hard to hunt down from the back.

I had an okay race.  I wasn’t turning that well fast on chewed up grass for some reason, even though I was riding lots of tread on my front tire.  I was back in the 20’s after two laps, but started passing guys pretty steadily the next few laps.  I decided that I was just going to do my own race and not worry about racing other guys during the race.

So, I just kept passing guys and having them sit on for a while, only to hopefully disappear later. I finally got up to the top ten with a lap and a half to go.  But, by then, the guys ahead of me were pretty spread out.  I kept riding hard and had to do a little racing on the final lap, but still won a 3 up sprint for 9th.

I felt like I was sort of running out of juice the last couple laps, but when I looked at my lap times, my final laps of the last race was the fastest I did all day.  It is weird how I could be so off there.  My perception was that I was going slower.  Maybe it was because I had the course down better or something.

Tristan went on a won the race ahead of Skyler Mackey, KCCX and Jacob Lasley.  Joseph finished 4th and said his stair running was pitiful.  I was only 30 seconds out of 6th and I lost all that on the first lap.

Overall, it could have gone a lot worse.  I am not too crippled and got some skills back. Yesterday riding I was waxed.  I was still trying to cough up the “object” and felt pretty wasted.  This morning I feel a little better.  We’ll see tonight, on the Monday night ride.  I’ve been doing this the last couple weeks and it has been pretty steady fast each time.

I haven’t really looked into the future too much.  I know there is Jingle Cross and Ruts and Guts in two weeks.  I’m not sure what is going on this weekend after Thanksgiving.  Now that Masters Cyclocross Worlds are now going to be in San Jose two weeks after Nationals, I’m way more interested in the next couple months of cyclocross.  But, it is going to be hard to gauge what I really need to do to be going fast in January.  I’m already a little tweaked from the last couple years, so I have to be conservative and try to rein in my urge to race a ton, I think.

 

Could get too much further back at the start.

Could get too much further back at the start.

I was riding with my friend Matt Ankeny for a couple laps early, but Matt needed to rest a couple laps after starting super hard.

I was riding with my friend Matt Ankeny for a couple laps early, but Matt needed to rest a couple laps after starting super hard.

I was just trying to get better a most everything both races.

I was just trying to get better a most everything both races.

 

I like 2 Chainrings, Even 3

This entry was posted in Comments about Cycling on by .

I was just reading an article at Velonews this morning and according to the review, the big “failure” of the new XTR trail group was that they don’t have a 42 tooth rear cog, thus makes it unacceptable for a 1x setup on a MTB.  I don’t get 1x.  Not at all.

The article says that 1x allows a wider range of gearing.  That is complete bullshit.  I hadn’t raced a MTB race in a really long time and happened to be out in Vail for the GoPro games this past summer, so I decided to ride the race on the spur of the moment.

I had a couple issues, but finally got into the top 15.  After the race, I was talking to a guy I was riding with at the end and he told me that he didn’t have enough gearing for the climb and he wished he would have put on a 30 in front instead of a 32.  I was riding 1998 XTR 9 speed, with a 34 in the back, but a 24 in the front and had no trouble climbing.

I remember Jimmy Mac telling me that the 1x setup doesn’t work for the weekend guy because of the same reason.  But, that might have been before the 42 rear cog and 10 tooth  small cog Sram has now.   But, I still don’t understand it.

I love front chainrings racing MTB.  I think it is awesome going hard into a climb, just a little overgeared, then just one shift in the front and be in the perfect gear for the start of the climb. Honestly, I don’t really understand getting rid of the granny gear in front.  I was riding a 24 x 40 up Powerline in Leadville.  I didn’t plan to be in that gear, but I didn’t plan to be all cramped up and barely moving.  If I would have had a 30 x 42, I would have been dead in the water for sure. The extra weight of having a 2nd, or 3rd chainring in front, then obviously a front derailleur and shifter, is well worth it in relation to have the options of having a wider selection of gearing.

Plus, who wants to be going and changing their chainrings for different riding?  I don’t.  I do a lot of MTB races that start out on pavement.  Races such as Chequamengon, Lutzen, Leadville, a lot of them.  And I’ve noticed that the rollouts are super tame compared to historical starts, not that I’ve done Leadville and Lutzen more than once.  But Chequamegon this year was much easier than the past.

And the reason is that the biggest gears that most of the fast guys have is a 32 x 10.  These guys are all spun out.  I feel undergeared with a 42 x 11 and well even more so with only a 38 x 11.  I don’t think a 32 x 10 is a big enough gear for lot of longer MTB races I do.  That is like the gear of being between a 53 x 16/17 on a road bike.  I would never start a road race with only a 17 in the back as my hardest gear.

Even in longer off-road races, like Berryman that I did last month, I was riding pretty fast on the open road sections.  Fast enough that I needed a 42 x 11.  Plus, the jump in the back from a 36 to 42 is huge.  That is 6 teeth.  XTR is bad enough going from 35 -40, a 5 tooth difference.   I don’t know that the rpm difference of shifting between a 36 to a 42, but it is huge.

I’ve ridden single rings in the front a lot.  My A bike in cross used to be one chainring in the front.  But on the starts, I’d be on my B bike with double rings and then switch once that initial start surge was over. But cross is completely different that racing MTB.  You might run into the situation where you need that other ring 3 or 4 hours into a race.  And you don’t know how you are going to be physically when you get there.

The biggest downside to all the different choices in front chainrings is how many different front derailleurs there are now.  I have 4 different Shimano front derailleur in boxes and none of them fit my MTB.  There are 2 and 3 chainring derailleurs, plus top pull, bottom pull and front pull, then low band and high band. They use shims so there aren’t so many clamp sizes, but still it is really hard figuring out what derailleur to order by the specifications.  And this isn’t really such a big downside, is it?

So, by now, I think you understand, I like the options that front chainrings offer, like 2 front chainrings, sometimes 3.  You’ll have a hard time convincing me otherwise.

This was a great crankset.

This was a great crankset.