ride joe ride

The pain of the Jackson Park race is fading into a happy memory, and it’s time to start looking ahead to the next race. Gear-wise, I am going to be making some modifications which include making sure I have a spare set of wheels in the pit. The current wisdom around cross circles is that the most effective upgrade one can make to a cross bike is to move to using tubular wheels. I’m a sucker for fads, no doubt, but I decided to analyze this a bit before jumping for tubs. So here is a comparison of two sets of wheels I’d be likely to get — one tubular and one clincher.

The wheels: Neuvation makes nice wheels and cuts out the middleman which means the price is good without having to schmooze up a bike store owner to buy other wheels at cost. Their M28 SL’s (clincher) and C50’s (tub) are competitive in all major factors with wheels costing multiple times more, so I’ll very likely go with one of these. Yes, I know I could get lighter wheels in both categories, but I’m sticking to what I am actually likely to buy.

Weight:

C50’s with Griffo Challenge tires in 32mm:  2180 grams
M28 SL’s with same tires and tubes: 2495 grams

The difference is 315 grams or about .75lb. This isn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but it’s important to note that nearly all that weight is near the outside of the rim. Rotational weight is widely considered to be much more important than static weight. In general, it’s difficult to lop 3/4 of a pound off the weight of the bike in one fell swoop any other way.

Price:
C50’s with Griffo Challenge tires and glue: $759
M28 SL’s with the same tires and tubes: $378

The clinchers are nearly half the price. This doesn’t take into account the ongoing wheel costs, which are potentially much higher with tubs either. Flatting a tub means at least a can of Vittoria pit stop, and can mean a new tire. Rolling tub or replacing an unfixable flat also means glue costs.

Pressure:

This is the big consideration, and the one most open to idiosyncratic observation. I’m only interested in my own plight, and I can run my current clinchers very reliably at 40lbs in the back and 35 in the front. I have experimented with as low as 35/30 and I pinch flatted occasionally. As for tubs, I suspect I could run 30/25 without endangering the wheel on most courses. The tubs clearly win in the pressure category.

Other concerns:

There are other concerns that play in which are more difficult to quantify too. Carbon wheels are more fragile, no doubt, but the deep rims potentially offer some performance gain in the mud (i.e. mud doesn’t stick to them). Having suffered with road tubs, I know that running tubulars can be a time suck with the gluing etc. Clinchers offer the ability to switch tires easily to match course conditions, and you can only match this by having several sets of tubs with different tires (which is not going to happen).

Conclusion:

I actually wrote this up while gathering the facts. My guess from the start was that the cost of the tubs would seriously outweigh the benefits, but I am not sure at this point. The rotational weight difference is pretty significant by itself. The pressure difference isn’t enormous, but it too is not insignificant. In the background I also know that I have a set of Mavic GP4 wheels that could be rebuilt for cross for less money than even the set of clinchers. Judging the current numbers I would say that I am unsure whether the gains are worth the nearly $400. If cost was even though, then the pain of dealing with tubs is, I think, worth the gains. After all, cross is about hurting right?

Photos here.

After weeks of anticipation, I raced cyclocross at Jackson Park yesterday. This was both my first cross race and my first bike race in general. I had a great time watching the earlier races and suffering though my own laps.

The course: I’d been practicing twice a week in Jackson park, so the terrain was no surprise. It’s almost entirely very flat with deep soul-sucking grass. The course was very fun, with half comprised of a very fast, open, grassy section that almost always provided ample room for passing. The other half was relatively technical with a run up (on the hill I practice run-ups on), a little mud, and barriers coming right out of a sharp 180 turn. With the exception of a tight little section, none of the turns were so technical that you couldn’t pedal through them if you approached them right. Oh, and there was a wicked little hill that you rode from top to almost to bottom, and turned 180 to ride back up. Lots of people crashed on this little hill. I am one of those people.

The weather: It was way warmer than I think anyone would have liked. By the time the 4b’s raced at 3 it was approaching 80 and very steamy. I don’t like the heat, and I was not digging the warmth.

My race: I like to start fast and chase people, and I managed to ride a race which I didn’t do either of these. Somehow, I ended up dead middle on the second row at the start line — not good. The guy in front of me took two kicks at the start and then slammed on his brakes and we nearly went down. By the time I made my way over to the side of the field and put the hammer down, I was barely able to make it up to mid-field before we hit the first technical section and I had to slide back in. I passed a few people on the first two laps, but I quickly found myself in a serious empty zone. Basically me cranking along, with nobody behind to push and nobody ahead of me to bridge to. For me, this is the worst possible situation. I tend to thrive on external challenge and I’m not so hot at motivating myself independent of somebody to pull on. So I sat in and suffered for what seemed like eternity, until I finally saw someone ahead and rejoiced. I pulled up behind him, but it was pretty clear he was fading. I whispered “go go go” and I guess he heard me. When I finally pulled around him, he mumbled “I’m going, I’m going.”

By the penultimate lap I was making all the same stupid barrier approaches I’d been laughing at previously in the day. It’s easy to be fluid in dismounting and going over when you’re legs aren’t jello, but by the end I found myself dismounting early for lack of trust in my legs. Finally, in the fast section before the bell lap, I looked over my shoulder to see a group of 5 or 6 guys beginning to make time on me, and I suddenly felt like I was in a race. We hit the start/finish line and we were all on it hard. My legs actually seemed freshish (or at least numb), and I pulled through the technical part of the course with the group 10 seconds behind me. I knew that if I could make it through the tech stuff, I’d be able to hold them off through the fast section and into the finish. But this was not to be. One of the guys in the pack was a bike length or so behind me as I started into hill with the 180, and I took it faster than I should have and wiped out at the apex of the turn. I was up and running the hill quickly, but the group blazed past me. I was almost ready to remount, but thankfully someone on the sidelines was screaming “Your chain!” Check your chain!” Replacing the chain cost me another couple of spots and really took the energy out of me. I managed to catch one of the rear stragglers from the group, and then pass one more guy before the end — which I finished out of sight of both people in front and behind me. I didn’t have the heart to check the results, but if I was mid-pack I’d be surprised.

The aftermath: The 4b race is so freakin short that I am not even sore today, though I have that semi-sick feeling which comes from being completely drained of adrenaline. The common adage seems to be that people are often hooked after their very first cross race, and I think I’m certainly a victim of that. What I didn’t expect was the way it would hook me. It’s both a beautiful and hideous pursuit. It combines graceful motion and a very simple, liberating fun with grueling self-torture. The hook for me is in trying to hang on to the beauty of form and control while struggling against melting into the pain. In some ways, it’s more like rock climbing than any sport that I have done since I climbed — hanging to a hold with muscles screaming trying to pull up just once more. By the last lap, keeping my effort together was the only thing in the world for me, balanced against the nausea and pain.

What I learned: My initial reactions are beginning to subside, so I think I can get a somewhat clearer idea of where I should head from here. I love cross and I’d like to place better next time. The biggest lesson is that I need to work on starts. I need to figure out what to do when I get a crappy position, and what I can do to get a better one. I also need to work on grabbing a wheel and holding on for dear life right at the beginning. I was nowhere near totally blowing up at the race, so I think I need to push more at the beginning to try and hang with a group that will help me dig deep. And I need to work on bridging up when I get dropped.

Two weeks until the DeKalb race, and I’m looking forward to it.

Edit: I finished 20th out of 49.

This morning at cross practice I found myself thinking about pain. For those of you unfamilar, cyclocross has a unique way of causing relentless pain. Because the races are relatively short, you spend almost all of your time going just short of as hard as you can. This constant effort is interspersed with transitions in which very hard effort switches to maximal effort if you’re really on. The result is that your body is continually riding the line between aerobic and anaerobic metabolism which usually leaves you trying to decide if you’re going to vomit or stop.

This morning the grassy ground was softened by heavy overnight rain that was still coming down, at times torrentially. The course was either deeply soaked grass or mud. The sum effect was to make going just that much harder – hence my meditation on pain. I found myself slipping into a state which I became very familiar with during ultramarathon races. I used to refer to this as “checking out.”

As pain becomes more and more intense, the normal response is to cringe away from it. You find yourself becoming increasingly tense and this is reflected in an agitated mind. You grip your bars tighter and you curse the course. Your thoughts are scattered and swirl around the idea of letting up. Let’s call that state a “9″ on the self-inflicted pain scale. It is usually found right around the anaerobic threshold.

I have found, though, that sometimes you can “push through” this. Instead of recoiling from the pain, in ultras I would choose to sort of embrace it. Instead of allowing the pain to sink in and rattle me, I would find myself observing it from a step of removal. The psycho/physical movement was simultaneously a stepping back from the pain as well as a “gathering up” of my wildly veering thoughts.

I’d notice almost instantly that my body would relax a good deal and my breathing would become less ragged. Oddly, when I began to relax my performance would actually increase sharply — in the days when I watched my heart rate, I would usually see a noticeable dip. The pain wouldn’t lessen, and sometimes would actually increase. But instead of being a Problem, it would be more an inevitability like the color green — something to be observed. Instead of wasting energy on a tense recoil, I could direct that into forward motion.

Freed from an intense focus on the pain, my mind would usually light on a memory of  happiness, usually one of a few different thoughts. Yeah, this is the “happy place.” For me it usually involved childhood memories of lying on my stomach on a wharf looking down into the deep emerald ocean water at a variety of colorful sealife, or memories of Allison’s smiling face. When I became more serious about ultras, I used to cultivate this state of mind, and all of my PR’s involved periods like this. These periods would be a state of “10″ on my pain scale.

On reflection today, I think that this ability to check out may be my one secret weapon on the cyclocross course. I am not gifted physically, and I think I need a few years of races before my skills shore up. But a common observation in both cycling and running is that when you’re out there with other people pushing hard you can be pretty sure that they are hurting about as bad as you are. Maybe the one skill I can bring from a few years of ultra running is the ability to willingly suffer just a little more than the next guy. So, next week when I find myself in my particular group of competitive colleagues out there in the mud, my goal is not going to be to go faster — it’ll be to turn the pain dial from a 9 to a 10.