Written for Cyclocross Magazine: Unpublished
Even thought cyclocross is full of low maintenance athletes (they drink beer right after the race!) it is a high maintenance sport. When I started I underestimated the amount of work it would take to dial in my bike and the race set up process. The whole procedure took me from 2005-2008, four seasons, to get it most of the way there. It was painful and rewarding in a way reminiscent of dentist visit in which they find no cavities. There is temporary discomfort, shame for not brushing enough, relief that all is in order, and an eventual realization at the cost of your endeavor.
My first year was plagued by bad decisions and a lack of knowledge about what I was getting into. My $100 Craig’s-listed Gunnar Crosshairs seemed like a great bargain. I built it up and only had to get help from my Local Bike Shop, when my lack of knowledge about center pull brakes made me cry uncle. I showed up to my first race; still remember it like yesterday, at Candle Stick Park right outside San Francisco. After my first warm up lap my pedaling felt funny. I pulled over by my car and realized my crank was not a little loose; it was flapping like a noodle. I was able to tighten it up with hex wrench and roll over towards the start (my warm up laps had been good, so I was stoked.) On my way over to the start I got a piece of glass stuck in my brand new yellow tufo clincher/tubular which had taken me three days to put on. I was riding it at about 30 PSI and was killing it in the corners but it seriously took me three days to put it on. Day one was several failed attempts. Day two was success at getting it almost on, day three was success! And day four was tire number two. Needless to say, there were not any neutral wheels and I was not able to race.
I thought I was prepared for my next race. I brought some extra wheels. They were road wheels, with road tires but I figured their mere presence would protect me from getting another flat in a parking lot. I got a good start; I was close behind the #2 rider in my Men’s C race when I came to a rough grass section. My adjustable Look stem, which is not a cheap piece of equipment, looked super bad ass on my bike. I thought it dialed in my handlebar position perfectly so I could nail the corners and stay in a good position the whole race. When I hit the grass the force of my none too svelt upper body pushed the handlebars into an aero position that is definitely banned according to UCI rules. It was impossible to ride any of the technical sections with my handle bars sitting inches above my front wheel. I found that if I carefully jerked the handlebars up I could get them into a ride able position which would hold until I hit anything rough, which sadly was most of the course. I found myself trying to ride the aero position I was being forced into more and more just so I didn’t have to keep adjusting the handlebars. I was able to finish the race, despite some back pain, and bruised ego and went straight to the bike store to replace the stem.
At this point my cheap $300 DYI cross project had turned into a $1000 that albatross that could have been solved by a new bike. The next year I bought a new bike which solved most of my mechanical problems. I tricked it out with some Spynergy Spock Carbon Wheels which also looked super bad ass. The Spynergies turned out to be the all time worst purchase I ever made for cyclocross. On my first ride I hit a rock and a piece of the carbon chipped off. I was able to ignore it for a few rides but it became progressively bigger until it was rubbing noticeably on my brake and make stopping too difficult. An engineering friend of mine who specialized in materials for military grade products patched it up so it was rideable which held up until my next ride at which point the wheel started breaking on the opposite side. I do not know how the previous owner rode these wheels in Cat 2 cross races in southern California as he claimed, but either he weighed 110 pounds or they ride on feathers down there. My friend and I ended up patching each wheel multiple times to the point that they looked like they should be on the Judd’s jalopy.
Poor wheels aside the new Giantseemed to cut out a lot of the issues, but this luck did not carry over into my third season. For some reason, I did not get rid of the bad luck wheels. I put new tires on them and patched up an additional crack that had appeared. The wheels felt like a job you can’t quit because you are getting paid so well. Anything else would have been a step down, not practically, but aesthetically. These were deep dish carbon wheels; I looked totally Sven Nys pro! Sure he didn’t have weird little patches holding his wheels together, or annoying white spokes that no bike store within 100 miles had a wrench that could true it up…but I was committed. These wheels had a lot of time and money put in them at this point. An so commenced my worst season ever.
The carbon wheels failed anytime I tried to race them of course… mostly it would be additional cracks, which I stopped repairing, but eventually the tired picked up on the general rebellion and malaise and stopped inflating. The wheels would inflate for practice rides or late night wrenching sessions but soon as I started racing I would be picking up my Gunnar in the pit. I ended up finishing every single race on my Gunnar and rarely made it into the top 20 at each race which I had been doing in the previous year. The Gunnar, while reliable, weighed about 23 pounds make it smooth on the rough spots but horrible for running and climbing. My wheels had developed an attitude problem that spread to the rest of my bike and even to the Gunnar. When I put on functioning wheels the free wheel got sticky pulling my chain off, when I fixed the free wheel my derailleur cable fell off. The final act of rebellion for the season concluded at the last race where I went through three bikes, which culminated in a broken seat post that drove the nose of the saddle straight up in the air prohibiting me from sitting down for the last two laps of the race. I was determined that 2008 would not suck.
I started my purchases for Project 2008 Will Not Suck in March. I started with some reliable Kyserium Mavic tubulars, then a new Giant frame, I swapped over my trusty Dura Ace group from my road bike, Vittoria tires, and then fixed up my older Giant as my pit bike. I did not throw away the crappy wheels, I don’t know what it is about them that makes me hold on so, but I took them out of rotation… permanently. The new rig was lighter, and sharper than my previous Giant, likely do to the Easton 90 fork. This bike rocked! I had one mishap my second race in which I kept dropping a chain. A master rider, and multiple national champion, chided me for not having a chain watcher… “Inexcusable” he said. The comment stung, I went from the lead to third after my chain fell off multiple times, I took it as advice and grabbed the first chain watcher I could find the following week. And while 2008 was not without its challenges – such as getting called out of race because my wife was in labor, it turned out to be my best season ever.
I found the challenge was not in dialing the bike in, but in turning each set back into a lesson that I could learn from. Dialing my bikes in took time, money, and therapy –but my first successful season was worth every penny.
