Tis the Season for CYCLOCROSS!! It has finally arrived in full force and I
can’t wait to do some early season races and plan to do as many as I can throughout
the season to race myself back into form.
I don’t expect any real results this year, because I have been away from
the sport for a couple of years and I am sure there is some good local talent
in the CAT3’s.
I have finally been able to get a steady training schedule
down and seem to be making some good progress towards my comeback. I set some goals back in January, the #1 goal
being to lose some weight and #2 to start riding my bikes again and #3 quit
making excuses. I have dropped a lot of
weight (40 pounds), but that has come at a price due to the calorie deficit it
takes to get that much weight off. So,
although I am finally at my “race weight”, I don’t seem to intake enough
calories to sustain an effort when I am on the bike. I need to find a balance between nutrition
and performance. I really need to figure
out what I can eat before and during a ride or race to give me the energy I
need to sustain an effort. Right now, I
can go fast for a short time and climb like a billy goat, but I just can’t
sustain either effort for as long as I need to. It’ll come, but I am not as patient
as I was 40 pounds ago.
I met Guru the other night at a secret training facility and
he laid out this kick ass cyclocross practice course for us to do some heat
laps on. I brought my portable pvc
barriers and we had a great course to race on, with all the necessary
elements. It was a blast and I was
putting down some great lap times. I
just hope that I can sustain that kind of effort for 45 minutes. If so, I should be good to go.
Speaking of cross, I converted to racing 100% on tubular
tires and carbon rims the last season I really raced (2009). It was a learning curve in many
respects. First and foremost is gluing
those bad boys on, followed closely by tire pressure. I won’t go into tire
pressure as it is a personal thing and varies by rider weight, tire selection
and course conditions, but it could mean the difference between a win and a
loss. I learned why gluing is the most important thing to me when I rolled a
couple off the rim during the 2009 season (see pic of a tire roll in action)
and got heckled by my teammate, I mean the crowd. So I was talking to a guy at one of the races
about it and he said he did all of his using the Belgian Gluing Technique. He even went as far to say that he had to cut
the tires to get them off, so I was immediately sold. Now, I can’t verify anything yet, because I
haven’t raced on the 2 sets that I Belgian Glued, but it looks very promising.
I still have one set mounted with just Vittoria Mastik One, that hasn’t rolled
yet, but the glue job is getting on in years and I expect it to roll at some
time during the season and then I will Belgian Glue those as well. Here is the
Belgian Gluing Technique that I used, straight from Stu Thorne:
Step 2. Apply a second thin layer of glue to the rim and tire. Thorne then adds tubular tape to the rim (the Belgian Tape from www.cyclocrossworld.com), pressing it against the rim to smooth the tape out.
Step 3. Peel the backing off the tape, revealing the second adhesive side, and apply a thin layer of glue to this side of the tape and a third layer to the tire before mounting the tire to the rim.
Step 4. Inflate the tubular to 80 psi in order to make sure the tire is properly seated on the rim. Thorne then lowers the pressure to around 50 or 60 psi to let the glue cure.
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| Rolling your own...tire |
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