roadcx.net

It is the first ‘normal’ weekend at home for me in over a month (Family in Town, Columbia, Funerals up in Michigan, Team Camp, and SouthernX/Cross-A-Nooga#2). That being said, it was nice to a normal weekend at home. Or it is probably more like an abnormal weekend given how many weekends I am away.

This week has been busy, haven’t really done much around the house after work. Washed up all the cyclocross bikes Friday after work in the fading light. I ended up cleaning all 4 bikes (3 of mine plus Andrea’s). Andrea plans to convert her bike back to SS/fixie…which gives me an idea for my Cannondale. It will be remade into a single speed with a chain tensioner. I have a cheap tensioner / spacerset that I bought a while back from Performance. I haven’t used it because it got bad reviews in an issue of CX magazine (probably issue #2). Since that bike is spare and no one it going to pay me much for it, I might as well make a SS for playing around on.

Today I was able to attend the Cordova group ride from Trinity Commons. It was a big group of about 30 riders (or more) with at least a dozen Memphis Velo in attendance. This time of the year is strange with 30-31F start temperatures rising up to 50F by the end of our 4 hour ride. I felt really good on the short hills and saw some good wattage numbers on sustained efforts. Looks likes things are falling into place. My biggest issue is that I need to put in the longer rides. I have only 5 weeks to get prepped for Rouge Roubaix. That means no more ‘cross (I am tempted to race Knoxiecross since I have a new bike…) and get the distance in on the weekends to supplement my trainer work during the week.

I also ordered another wheelset for the road and for cross next year. Bonktown had a Reynolds carbon tubular wheelset for $970 shipped. I was going to buy a wheelset a bit later, but the deal was too good to pass up.

Since coming back from my ride, I have been pretty drained and have been eating a lot. Normally*, Andrea and I would go out to eat post ride, but she left for her ride as we were coming back in. I thought about winging around and joining her, but it would put me at 110 miles probably. Not quite ready for that…. in a few weeks I will be ready. I did feel good at the end of the ride today, but I want to do a long ride tomorrow (to/from Outdoors ride = 75 miles + any adders).

I will head out to the backyard and turn over the compost pile (which is mostly yard waste). Maybe I will add some photos.

After Saturday’s Southern X, I wasn’t sure how it would go. Either it would go well or really bad. Getting up on Sunday morning, I didn’t feel bad, but didn’t have a lot of snap.

Our CX3 race was run as A-race with CX12 + CX3 together. The course was a power course with a few short steep hills, lots of sharp corners, a sand pit, and a few barriers. My start had me marking the back of the field (not surprising) but I was still in contact.

I continued to try to fight up a much as I could but was having trouble getting through the sand without stalling. I was only really getting it right on the last 2-3 laps.

At the end, I had to settle for 4th in CX3 just 8 seconds behind Nate Netwon (Biker’s Choice). The difference was clearly the sand issues I was having.

This is my last race of my 2008-2009 CX campaign. My two January TBRA races were disappointing in my pair of 4th places. I know why both occurred (illness & hard climbing), but it is nevertheless disappointing.

Photo galleries: [A-race: CX123][B-race: M35/WCX123][C-race: CX4/WCX4]

Now it is time to clean up the ‘cross bikes for summer storage (I will leave my X-fire available for riding) and pull my TT bike out of the attic. Road season looms. My first planned race is only 6 weeks away.

What a day. Andrea and I headed down to race the first-year endurance cyclocross race, Southern X. The info was pretty thin, but it looked to be epic. The race started/finished at Mulberry Gap, a sort of mountain bike resort with cabins, etc. We stayed the night in Chattanooga (thanks Shannon for having us at your house) and got up early and drove down to Mulbery Gap near Elijay, Georgia. The drive took about 1:20 most of it seemed was the last several miles of dirt, mountain roads. It also started to rain as we came in which made even the roads a bit slippery for my Escape.

We got checked in and started to dress out in the freezing cold rain. It probably was in the low-40’s, but it felt really cold with the large raindrops falling on us. The promoters limited the field to 60 to keep the event low-key and due to limited parking. The course featured a very up and down short loop on the property featuring a few run-ups and swooping wet pavement action on the steep declines of the roads. The start had everyone fighting for position as we fought our way out to the Forest Service road. Once out on the road, the course twisted and turned and mostly descended for the first 5-6 miles. Then we hit the pavement. Andrea and I collected in the chase group of ~10 with another 10-12 up the road. The groups came together at the end of the 5-6 miles of pavement, just in time for the start of the climb.

The start of the 12 mile climb was more moderate, averaging 3-4%, but started to wear on you due to the additional drag of the soft surface (and the low tire pressure). After a few miles, Andrea caught up to me and started to lead me up the hill. Around 4-5 miles into the climb, I spotted a set of Rudy Project sunglasses, so I looped back and picked them up… maybe another mile later, I dropped my 2nd pair of gloves (in a Ziploc). So I stopped again to get those.. As the climb dragged on the pitch became worse and worse. My low gear was 39×26 and I started to live there. When the pitch got bad, I would slow down to 3.2 – 3.6 mph… which is actually slower than a deliberate walk, so it was time to get off and change up the muscle strain a bit. In this last section, I was able to claw back a few people and eventually I caught back up to Andrea at the top of the climb. Net climb was 2800 feet over 12.9 miles.

The top meant we had a short break from the climbing…a very short break. We dropped 500-600 feet over a 1 mile or so and then started to climb again for another 500 feet again. As we continued over the top, Andrea stopped to bundle up and eat something while I continued on chasing a pair of riders ahead. I ended up catching and overtaking the pair up the climb and pulled back another.

On the long descent, I was a bit more reluctant than I wanted to be but in general I think I did okay dropping the muddy drop…and not flying off the side somewhere. Once down at the bottom, the course continued on and on for what seemed like forever but was really only 5 miles probably.

Then we re-entered the property with a nasty, nasty run up. They said it would be a crawl up and the numbers bear that out (my Garmin in my backpocket said it was 175′ @ 56% (85 feet climb) followed by a tamer section of 400′ @ 16% (65 feet up). After that was a steep downhill onto pavement (15% down grade for 0.2 miles). After that were two shorter run-ups and some more pavement / gravel roads and some logs, etc. At the end, I was about 5-10 seconds behind 11th place and ended up 12th. I haven’t seen the complete run-down, but in the open-men division, I would say there was over 30, maybe 40 something in it.

After 3:15 of suffering. Photo by Namrita O’Dea.

Andrea finished a few minutes after me. She was leading the women’s race up until the last 1/4 mile on the final run-up where she was overtaken and had to settle for 2nd. I am sure she will have a good story to tell there.

The good news is that despite a random pre-race / transit deflation, my tubeless setup ran perfectly @ 32/35 psig. When checking my tires on Sunday morning before the Chattanoga CX race, I only lost about 3 psig in the rear tire. I have been having better luck with my setup after some initial issues with burping air (first it was front tire, then it was my rear tire. I ended up remounting the rear, so that probably took care of it). For those interested, my setup is Easton Velomax Vista wheels (700c), Kenda Commando (35), and the Stan’s NoTubes CX kit. Still planning to get some tubies for next year, but the tubeless setup has had a good run underneath me…just not a lot of good racing (Columbia #1, I was sick… Cross-A-Nooga #2 I was a bit off due Southern X).

Saturday was my first test of my new X-fire. I had ridden it only 2x at Shelby Farms pre-race. I gave it a big test and save a bit of front brake shudder under heavy braking all is well. I will have to bend some part of the brake system to get it right, but then all will be awesome.

I will have to wait on posting about Cross-A-Nooga for the moment. I will try to put up the galleries for now (check the galleries page).

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Update: the results are up on the 55nine performance website.

[if link broken, 2009-01-24-southern-x-results as pdf]

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1/28/09 Update: Cycling news story.

and another photo… this one showing the fog of the climb about 9 miles up (of 12-13 mi). And we did take the sharp right up the hill….

Photo by Bob Donlan.

More stories and photos linked off Namrita’s blog on the 1/25/09 posting (she was co-promoter along with her husband Eddie)

I would say that I know almost nothing about this race other than the course map and where to meet. It look likes it will be a tough slog up a hill.

These were based on the mapmyride course.

I had these photos sitting in an seldom-looked-at email account… Keith Nash sent them to me just after Beat the Freak #5 back in November.

Or lack there of… here is the scene at the Poplar Plaza French Rivera Spa at 11:30am this morning when I started. Maybe all the morning people just suddenly left to watch the inauguration at 11am?

I decided to circle a few problems to make it very clear what I mean. There was also a small barbell with 3# weights on it (whole thing was ~10#) in from the squat rack with the two barbells on it (on the ground) and a few plates scattered about. I took care of about half of this problem as I worked through… how many people can sled hack squat 360# + machine + body weight? Maybe if you are doing 1/4 (or less) squats as most do with the heavy stuff.

I think I have caught Andrea’s pet peeve.

Here are a few photos that Scott Horkey took during our team camp. They are from our Saturday ride from the Mt. Magazine lodge, down to the valley and then back up the climb. He was using his small camera (SLR’s are hard to ride a bike with), so they weren’t the usual quality offerings…

The weather ended up turning out alright and we had a great weekend of riding (w/ climbing) and team building.

Day 1. After driving up over from Memphis in cold conditions, we are started our ride at mid-day from the top of Mt. Magazine @ the lodge. Our plan was to do the Tour of Arkansas race course from last year which is pretty much drop down the shallow side of the mountain (northern) and ride the undulating terrain around to the southern approach via Havana.

The ride went well… the southern part of the loop featured a nice tailwind where we tore up the miles at 30 mph with minimal effort. For the climb we all did our own thing (own pace)… I was pretty happy with my climb for the most part, but not very pleased with my drop off in watts near the top. I really shouldn’t expect much since it is still early in the off-season (on my cyclocross modified off-season).

At the top we grouped up and checked in our rooms or the cabin. Andrea and I stayed in the cabin which featured great valley views, a hot tub on the deck (with said views), and lots of space. After dinner, the 7 of us in the cabin plus several from the lodge had a good low-key party (we did have to climb the next day after all).

Day 2. Our original plan was to drive the 1+ hour to Petit Jean and do a loop. This wasted time driving both ways plus the mind-numbing boredom of the valley roads west of the park made us reconsider. After some discussions, we decided to get creative and plan another loop off the top of the mountain this time dropping down towards Havana first, then circling around on the eastern side of the mountain to the northern approach. We thought it might involve some farm roads or some gravel roads… we weren’t sure. I plotted a course on mapmyride and then pushed it in my Garmin 705 (which proved to be a good thing). (I had tried to use bikeroutetoaster.com, but it kept having issues, so I had to give up on this and its automatic turn alerts.)

We started off tearing down the hill, but taking the hairpins very cautiously due to the large amount of sand in the corners. Once we got down to Havana, the pavement ran out pretty quickly…maybe about 1/4 mile out of town. We decided to go with it. About 1 mile in we had a double flat (two people had flats at the same time). Tim’s was bad and it cut his sidewall…he ended up turning back and doing the Havana side climb along with Steve rather than risk it on the gravel roads. So were then six. We made some good progress but kept getting stopped by flats… by the 12th mile or so, we were running critically low on CO2 carts and somewhat on tubes after 5 flats (3 for Jarret, 1 for Todd, maybe 1 for Susan). In the end, we made it back to tarmac after about 15 miles on gravel roads loaded with irregular sharp rocks on hardpack. Along the way we crossed at least 5 streams and went over 3 significant hills. All in all it was pretty epic and pretty cool at the same time. There was not a lot of buildings out in this country, but the ones that we did see were interesting as you would expect to find when 5 miles or more from paved roads.

Now it is back to reality. But not for long…Andrea and I are headed to Chattanooga Friday afternoon to race Southern Cross on Saturday in North Georgia and then she how much legs are left for the 2nd Chattanooga CX race on Sunday. It would have nice to have my new Ridley out on those gravel roads today…although I don’t know I would have dropped off Mt. Magazine as fast on those knobbies.

Tomorrow morning Andrea and I will join a bunch of my teammate for some western Arkansas mountain climbing. The weather here is still frigid tonight, but the forecast is showing temperatures over 50F by the time we start riding Saturday afternoon. We are going to start on Magazine, drop down towards Paris loop back to Havana. Pretty much doing the 1st Annual (and only) Tour of Arkansas.

We have lodge rooms and a cabin up on top. So we will stay the night and then go do a loop near Petit Jean State Park on Sunday. A few will stay on for Monday (talking smack about Nebo), but alas, I will return to Memphis and go to work since although I do get Columbus Day off of work, I do not get MLK’s birthday as a holiday.

It should be a lot less epic than our trip out west last February….

This afternoon I built up my new X-Fire frame.

SRAM Drivetrain… Red crank, Force Brake lever/shifters, Force FD, Rival RD. Empella Frogleggs brakes. Thomson seatpost/stem, Richey handlebar.

Andrea dressing up the bars as she does.

Ready to ride.

After the build, Andrea and I did two laps of the Farms before the sun went down.

Now, comes an interesting question. The ride of the new X-Fire is sweet. It is considerabely more responsive than my CrossBow. I haven’t weighed it yet, but I would guess it is 18-19#. Since my CX3 jersey quest is off the rails, I was planning to ride in the western Arkansas mountains with teammates this weekend. The other choice is the 2nd weekend of Columbia…. I probably will do the climbing and race Southern Cross and Chattanooga #2 the following weekend.