Cross talk. Talk Amongst Yourselves.

Flo30 on the ss and hplus hydra on the Crockett, so def not undersized.

Didn’t have problems last season on the Clement jawns

Coming in late, but yeah, that was the basic idea. I’ve talked to people who have burped out 10psi and kept it going to some degree. Maybe those people got lucky? But with a tube flat, you’re guaranteed done.

I’m with @b-roll in the whole tubeless learning curve, and I keep going back and forth whether it’s worthwhile for this niche. I just picked up a tubeless MTB, so I’ll have a chance to experiment.

Tubes:

  • Tire swapping is easy
  • Run lower pressures
  • Flats are game enders
  • Heavier wheels (spinning weight)

Tubeless:

  • Better ride quality?
  • No pinch flats
  • Burping not a guaranteed game-ender
  • Tire swapping is hard (Probably requires another wheelset).
  • Requires higher pressures
  • Lighter wheels

I feel like what will burp a tubeless tire and what will flat a cincher aren’t necessarily the same things.

With tubulars I’ve never felt totally comfortable with hard cornering because I’m as bad a bike mechanic as I am a bike racer.

Wait, what? I thought the whole thing about tubeless is that it allows lower pressure?

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I’ve flatted two or three racing ralph tubulars, so I started to opt out of those. Re-laced wheels to chrisscross rims and tubeless tires. Previously managed non tlr racing ralphs with stans strips. Tubeless has always worked out for me, even down to squirmy pressures.

For everyday riding you can run lower pressures without risking a pinch flat, and mountain biking, which has fatter tires to take the hit, but for cross, you go so low that you risk unseating the bead in corners, and especially when you’re riding (and hitting) curbs, stairs, logs, etc. (though more skill may mitigate the risk).

My tubed pressure is usually between 20-25, which I’m told is a bit crazy, but I usually only flat once a year. I’m told if I ride tubeless, I’d probably need to be closer to 30. Not sure if the people talking to me are taking my weight into consideration (but also I’m heavier than I’ve ever been at 150).

Let me know if I’m misunderstanding. Like I said, I’m on the low end of the learning curve.

Most of my team is tubeless. When I bought a bike with tubeless wheels from one, they told me to run 25-30, considering I’m about 180. But I think you get a lot more rad than me.

You definitely do not need to use such high pressure! I was racing tubes at 28 and tubeless down to about 21.

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HT Men’s pro cross is soooooo boring.

Now that a certain someone can build up a minute lead in the first few laps and just cruise the rest of the race, yeah.

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Yuuuup. It’s interesting how fun a live race is, regardless, and how much that flattens out when seen on TV.

Do y’all think mvdp and wva are actually that much faster or did everyone else just stop racing against them?

mvdp, yes. This season he seems to have ditched the last of his sketchiness. His handling finally matches his confidence in his handling. He’s always been crazy fit, so yeah. Now he’s even dialing it back once he has his crazy lead so he can be more ready to dominate the next race. That’s something he can more confidently do now that he’s riding less sketchily.

Wout seems to be mortal and beatable by a lot of those other dudes.

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Today’s race was good though. Didn’t disprove anything said above, but wasn’t boring.

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Pretty standard outcome in today’s race, but that course was so rad.

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Thanks for posting that

GCN has English commentary for a bunch of races on their FB page. They also do a lot of them live if you’re into being awake from 4:45 to 7am.

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Then they just upload the video and you can watch the entire broadcast whenever you want.

Yep. Live is best. But then I go back and watch the replay and realize that I was actually asleep during most of the live broadcast.

This was fun. The sport has definitely changed a lot. But dominating breakaways from the first lap and hopping barriers are apparently nothing new.