I did a practice today. We pretended sticks were barriers.
I practiced on my fat tire road bike because I couldn’t get the sscx working. I’ve got it mostly together, but my new crank has a 39 ring instead of a 38 and that means I need to adjust the EBB. Which I haven’t been able to do because I need a pin spanner.
Went out to Beatty to mark out the new course for the first race of the series in 3 weeks. We were able to dig out a great off chamber descent that will put us through a dry-ish pond. Go too far to the outside and it will be mud. Either way, it’s gonna get sandy really quick and the run-up is gonna get pretty nasty.
Got most of the course marked. Maybe need an hour with it the day before/of and to tape it. One thing that really bothers me is one of my partner’s nonchalant-ness of staking the course. I try to be pretty uniform and keep the course at a constant width and stakes pretty much the same distance from each other, but he just does whatever. there’s a visible difference between the areas I did and what he did. I’m going up earlier than him the day before, So it’s likely that I’ll be fixing everything.
Awesome! Can’t wait to see the whole thing. Are people gonna race it on file treads? I assume it’s going to be super dry, but also looks loose in areas.
Can you give us a super secret sneak peek video of the course?
I’m trying to figure out the fit on this thing. It feels long, but I measured the distance from saddle nose to the bulb on the hoods and it’s a few cm shorter than my road bike. It seems like this should be ideal, but it still feels weird. My old ss bike never felt great. My old geared cx bike felt good, but it is in pieces in a storage unit and I’d have to rebuild it to get measurements.
If you had a good road bike, how would you take the measurements from that and apply them to a CX bike?
Bonus Q: I forget which is better. Slammed boner stem or longer steerer and flatter stem?
I don’t have a video, unfortunately. I assume most people are gonna use an intermediate tread, but that’s because our cross scene is still relatively young. There are going to be a few loose climbs and the course is running backwards the next day. I would love it if we could get some weather, but seems unlikely. The guy that owns the ranch would totally spray down this area, though.
Are you going to alter the course for each direction or run it as-is?
ATMO artificial weathering feels wrong for cx. If it’s a dry course, just let it be dry. I always hated coming home and having to spend extra time cleaning my bike just because someone decided to leave the hose running in order to have a water feature.
Is the water in the second pic likely to be gone by race day? Or, considering that it’s a ranch, I guess there’s a chance that it’s pretty nasty.
Not likely to be all the way gone. I wasn’t meaning totally water it down. Just enough so the it will compact a bit.
Oh yeah. That would make a big difference. So rad that you’ve found someone with good land who is excited about hosting a race and putting in some work. Was that the owner’s excavator in the pics?
Maybe try replicating your road fit dead on and then adjusting from there? I’ve not raced cross in a few years, but usually kept my fit mostly the same across road and cx bikes, but with my bars cocked back a little bit.
Yep. We paid his guys for their time. Originally, we had some Belgian stairs at a different area that we aren’t going to use and wanted to move those. The area we wanted to move them to was almost solid rock and would have taken 2 days of work, so we decided to pass. In the past, we’ve gone around this pond thing and it’s always been a mix of dry clay and sand that was quite challenging. They are trenching around the backside, so we saw this being a bit dry and were able to utilize it and create the runup we wanted.
Yeah. I need to get it on more dirt and go from there. Just measured and I’d totally forgotten that my road bars are 42 (cx are 44). That’s probably a big part of it. Gotta remember that I only need to be comfortable on it for 45 minutes at a time.
This definitely looks a little stretched out for you.
I like boner stem/less steerer personally.
That’s exactly what I’m feeling. How does that work when it measures a few cm shorter?!?
The saddle sucks. That could make a big difference probably. Anyone have a fizik aliante they want to get rid of?
The stem in that pic is 90. I put an 80 on there today. Still feels wrong.
have you compared the saddle-bar drop to other/good setups you have? too high of bars can certainly give me a stretched out fit even with same length
Those hoods are long. Maybe that’s what’s making things feel weird?
I dunno. Too short a stem seems like a bad idea. Easy to get bounced off your line.
That’s part of it for sure. I’d forgotten about that. CX is definitely a few cm closer to saddle level. On the plus side, I’ve got lots of room to play around. I need to head to a park with a wrench and a couple of stems.
How so? Because weight is farther back? Just playing around on the street, I was having a tougher time getting the front wheel up than on my old bike. I’d rather have more maneuverability than more stability. I get bounced off of my line plenty on my old bike with a 110.
FWIW, I usually ride my cx bike with the saddle a little further forward and lower.
If you want to copy the fit. back the bike you want measure up to a wall then measure everything from the floor and wall. Now take new bike and figure out the BB offset of the new bike and do all your measurements from the floor and wall again adjusting for the different bottom bracket location.
