roadcx.net

Went down to Shreveport with Dale and met Frogge down there. Frogge and I raced in the 1/2/3 race. The road race went pretty well, I felt pretty good and covered some attacks and initiated some others but didn’t get in the correct ones. Pack finish for both Frogge and me. A total of 9 riders were off the front or way off the front, leaving the field over 6 minutes behind.

The second stage was a time trial along the river in Shreveport. Had some issues with my TT bike lately (seat clamp fell apart the week before, derailleur hanger was being held in by the skewer, etc, but in general everything was all set). After my disappointing performance at MSGP (at least it was to me), I wanted to roll a good TT. I ended up at 10:46 a few seconds off the time Frogge posted. I don’t think it made much of a difference, but my saddle was way back from where I set it before the whole seat clamp issue. Eventually, I will get my TT bike setup correctly and keep it there! Our TT times put us 16th and 17th in the G.C. Okay, but not where we wanted to be.

The final stage was the circuit race down an underdeveloped industrial park that allowed the organizers to close off a L-shaped boulevard. The course was this L-shape with two 180 degree turns at either end. Seeing the course, I expected the accelerations were going to be tough, in that respect it didn’t disappoint. I felt pretty good after the first couple of laps and started to get a bit more active in the race… it might have lead to a few times when I got gapped off the field out of a turn-around. But I was able to recover and get back into the mix.

At just after 60 minutes of the 70 minute race… it happened…. I was headed around one of the 180 degree turns, maybe a bit more sharply than before as I got more bold….bam. I hit the ground. I rolled my front tire. Race over… nice gash on my forehead, a few other abrasions, but other-wise okay. DNF for me. Frogge finished with the field.

W.r.t. my tire…. This year I am learning to glue on tires after a 1-1/2 years of using Tufo Extreme Tape on my other wheelset. My concept was by gluing up all road season long, I would get practiced enough to glue on cyclo-cross tires. The procedure I used was the one on the Park tools website, but it is pretty much the same as others I have seen. 2-3 coats on the rim, 1 coat on the base tape, 1 fresh coat on the rim and you are done. Thin coats was the advice. The front tire and my first rear tire were glued using this procedure and probably (apparently) too little glue. I had since flatted out two rear tires and now I am on my third rear tire, each glued using more and more glue. The front is the same. At this point, I haven’t done the whole post-mortem, got back to Memphis just in time to get stitched up at a minor medical place before they closed.

Dale had a pretty good weekend and gained some great experience. He is just starting out racing (as a cat 5). He has done races but they have always been spread out over time. His circuit race turned out to be pretty epic with 50°F temperatures, wind, and driving rain. Everyone stayed up in his circuit race. If it wasn’t for my front tire, the 1/2/3 would have had a safe weekend. I am sure glad I didn’t take anyone else out.

I took photos of the Cat 5 race. Dale took a couple photos of the Cat 4 race and a bunch of the Cat 1/2/3 race.