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Well, I rolled the other one. Probably shouldn’t have used those used tires, but it looked to be a good glue job. One hard corner and I was in the dirt.

I am writing this as we head back to Memphis (Andrea behind the wheel). I got one of those Verizon MiFi portable access points… So far, so good. We will testing out the coverage map in rural Arkansas in the coming months. It worked at the race venue (rural Tennessee where my AT&T iPhone didn’t work at all). Yeah, AT&T sucks. (I had 3G coverage where my iPhone didn’t work at all, no voice, no EDGE, certainly no 3G.)

Back to the race. Raced the CX1/2 + 3 race at the McEwen CX festival. We had a decent sized field (maybe 10 at the start). I got an okay start, Andy Reardon showed up and walked away from our group of 5. We were traversing an offcamber section when Jeremy when down in front of me…. I tried to cut up the bank and joined him on the ground 10 feet behind him. We both recovered and chased back to the other 3.

On the second lap, I attacked up the hill and caused a bit of a split and tried to keep the pressure on leading the group up the 2nd hill section. At the end of thiat section, the course went on and off the pavement twice and had a sweeping sketchy turn at speed. This is where I rolled off my front tire. I went down hard on the hard pack dirt. Throwing off my glasses in the process. Will and another nearly ran me over (there were right behind).

I picked up my bike after see the tire had rolled and walked / trotted to the pits.

Over the barriers. Injuries from the crash made suitcasing the bike not a fun activity. photo by Marsha White.

John Carr saw me running and gave me a bike change to my pit bike. At this point, I was sort of half in the mood to race and i probably took me a lap to get back into the grove. I had 8 more or so to figure it out. I picked off some of the people that passed me when I was running (mostly the women that were on the course at the same time as us). Ended up 5th of 6 finishers. (Jeremy also went down overcooking that corner and snagged the course tape ending his race.)

Chasing… photo by Marsha White.

After the race, it took a while…despite several beers out of the Yazoo keg…but that really hurt. Not much broken skin. Some light abrasions and a bruised hip. Racing tomorrow will either be awesome or really, really suck. We’ll see.

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What when wrong, an attempt to make sense of it: basically, this tire was a used tired when I got these wheels (was Tufo taped on). The tape bond on the front was strong, but after my rear one failed (Beat the Freak #2), I cleaned these up and reglued. The rear one came unbonded the next weekend (although I caught it before it rolled and put a new tire on instead). For the front, it looked to be in good shape after a pretty good glue job.

I think what killed it is that the base tape wicked up some of the nasty mud that we have been living with in Tennessee this year, before I sealed it. I think the Aquaseal on the base tape would have saved this tire, but I put it on too late (only the week before last). My plan is to clean up the rim and put it on a hook until next year and glue on a fresh tire late next summer. I only have two more races and both are dry courses (grass, etc). I will use a clincher tire / rim. I have plenty of both.