Cyclocross Rant

Today is the official start of fall, and with fall comes cyclocross. I'm not sure what happened last year, but I had a big urge to have another go at cross (this is after trying it 2 years earlier and hating it). I fell in love. Road racing doesn't make me as excited, and mountain bike racing (save short track...which is like cross) doesn't make me as excited. So this post is completely dedicated to cross.

First with some disappointing news. My Grifo tubular tires. Here I was all excited about running sub-30psi pressures, and it doesn't look that is going to happen. I'm up to 32/34psi front/rear (and still experiencing a little tire roll in the rear, which means I might go up 1-2psi more). This is still pretty low, but I expected more. At 80kg I shouldn't expect a lot more though. Maybe I'll get to do a nasty muddy race and run them below 30psi at least once this year.

My Williams Cyclocross wheelset has really impressed me. No they're not the lightest wheelset out there, but for the money I don't think it would be possible to beat them. The hubs are as smooth as any wheelset I've ever handled. They also accelerate great, which I feel is very important in CX racing. On top of all that, they look great too.

CX training. Right now I'm just hammering out tempo, sweetspot, and threshold work. 2x20's and 3x20's, each once per week, are getting the legs ready. I've done a set of practice starts and some dismount/remount practice. Hopefully the first race will go pretty well. I hope to start adding in some VO2 intervals in the form of 6x2's or 3's after 4 weeks of core training.

Upgrading to CX2. I'm not sure if this is a good goal for this year. I'm only expecting to do about 6 cross races, and if the MSG fields aren't any bigger than last year I don't know that upgrading can happen. With those size of fields, points only go to the top 3, with 3rd getting only 1 point. If we get lucky, the field size at the MSG events will be 15+ deep in the CX3 cat. Even if it's small I hope to see a strong field.

More to come...