I always do my own work on my bikes. I always have. One of my rules for shopping is to always put at least one tool on every order of bicycle-whorehouse parts you buy. This way you can accumulate all the stuff you'll need to keep your stable of machines race ready. If you can find them that is. My friends and acquaintances all make fun of me because I take forever to get stuff done on my bike. And they foolishly confuse little stuff like reluctance to spring for new bar tape, crooked stems (don't have an eye for that) or dirty wheels as signs of mechanical incompetence. I think I know what I'm doing. I've even had some training, and learned a ton of stuff being responsible for the well being of a wide variety of mechanical equipment over the years. I'm not overconfident, yet in hundreds of bike races, if I've ever had a DNF mechanical, I don't remember it. But I know I'm a hack. And these days I'm really lazy, working on bikes annoys me, and I don't like getting my hands dirty. So if I can get by leaving the bike as is, I do.
There are limits though. Last week I noted (on the warmup lap) that I should have put my Thudbuster ST seatpost on my bike. Yes, it weighs 140 grams more than my already heavy by today's standards Suntour XC Pro, so boo-hoo. Those of you complaining about back pain should take note -- lower back agony will slow you down a lot more than those 140 grams ever will. So I took care of this. Luckily, I had a spare Flite saddle with the cover ripped completely off, just like the one already on the bike, so I could save the other seat/seatpost setup as is just in case. Done. Then we moved on to the real issue - gearing. Last year I had 38/47 chainrings on this bike. Most courses I ran a 12/27 9speed cassette. No worries, except you may remember a few dropped chain issues. Well, fiddle as I may, I could not obtain acceptable shifting with this chainring combination and any front changer I had in house. These days they are designed for 14T difference and while 12 or even 10 might work OK, 9 was not for me. So I caved, threw the 47T ring across the room, rummaged through my box o' rings and found a brand new 130 bolt pattern 50T Salsa. A bit big for cx, but on it went. Front shifting nirvana, with minimal fussing. The only problem was I'd already gone with a new DA chain, and I'd cut it pretty short (hey, maybe this wasn't helping my front shifting either eh?) and now with the 50T is was just too short. In the 50x24 the rear changer was laid out horizontal, and should I force feed it the 27 by mistake or on purpose, something bad was bound to occur. Since those are exactly the kind of shifting mistakes/decisions that happen all the time in cross races, this situation was one of those mythical mechanical DNF just waiting to flower. What to do? Well, for Gloucester I put on a 12/25 and said f-it, let's go. It still wouldn't cross over, but I rolled the dice and finished the race. Canton too. Wrentham? Hey, like I said, the race isn't until noon. Now sure, I could put on a new chain, or even find some links and add them to this one. No thanks. Those Shimano magic pins are voodoo enough; I don't need two or three of them. No, I'm going to pull a Yogi and be smarter than the average bear, and just swap out the cassette for a 12/23.
Can you believe it took me 1000 words just to spit that out? So yeah, now I've got 38/50 with a 12/23. Not exactly cx bike gearing, but on today's kinder, gentler courses, I've rarely found myself in the little ring anyway, so what the hell. Nothing is ideal here anyway. My 21 pound beast literally looks sick (I mean sick and dieing) next to Bold and Hines' new bikes. So I'm going to worry about having the wrong gears? Please. Anyway, this was just my way of telling you I rode the entire race at Wrentham in the little ring. I still don't trust the front shifting, and the course isn't all that fast. I may have got to the 14 cog or so, but I never looked down so I can't really tell you. Maybe it was the 12, who cares.
I also ran the same aged Michelin Mud clincher on the front that I've ridden at every race this year. Inflated it to 41 psi, slammed a few rocks and roots in the woods and lived to tell about it. In the rear I ran a Tufo something or other, not the fancy Flexus, sure as hell not an FMB or whatever the boutique-chic tire of the week is, inflated to 36 psi, and with the suspension post I didn't ding the rim at all this week. And I have top mounts. We're talking BOB masters here dudes. Like it says on the the green wheel you know. And by the way Trackrich, that's also the proper response for all the heckling we're giving you since your win.
There you have it, all the stuff that was left out of the Wrentham report. Damn this is getting so Gewilli. Just don't tell him I bought my salad all made at the market... And oh yeah, the Canton 10k. That was Sunday. After Wrentham, on the cooldown lap, I felt incredibly toasted. Then after twenty minutes or so, not so bad at all. Maybe I'm getting used to this. High hopes for Canton were pretty dashed though. Just as the Pinnacle Challenge ceased to be an "A" event the instant I signed up to race Gloucester on the prior day, the Canton 10k went down the shitter when I decided that I just couldn't pass up a $20 race twenty minutes from home, and went to Wrentham on Saturday. Time for a goal adjustment. Canton isn't exactly a PR course anyway. It's not certified for one thing, and it's hilly and hard for another. So instead of going crazy and worrying about my time, I'd focus on my pacing and try (once again) to run negative splits. The Anti-Slide if you will...
Happy Halloween!
Short version - didn't work out that way. Long version - the race is hilly, and starts out downhill, thus splits don't matter at this mofo. I thought I was holding back at the start. It's hard to tell how many people are in front of you, as the 5k and 10k start together. But I was a long way back. Mile one the guy says 5:39. Fuck! That was not supposed to happen. Well, maybe he was in the wrong place. More downhill, mile two and I'm at 11:40, a 5:51 split. That's better, I guess, but there's no way I'm running this entire thing sub 6 pace. My goal was actually a 6:04 pace, as this was slightly faster than the 10k McMillan equivalent for the 5 mile time I ran a few weeks ago. With the Canton course being harder, this was quite a stretch, especially with Wrentham in my legs from Saturday. But wtf, I'm not getting any younger, I have to try right? The third mile winds downhill through some tight turns on neighborhood roads before kicking into a steep 300 meter wall back up to Green Lodge street, which heads down yet again. I pass one guy in a GNRC kit on the wall, but he stays with me. 17:45, 6:16 split. Could this be a slide? Mile 4 is downhill for about a quarter mile, then stairstep up. Very tough, with the marker a bit before the top of the toughest part, so not only does it hurt this split, it gets the next one off to a sorry start too. 6:11. I'm trying to follow a guy in front of me but now he's pulling away. Turns out he's over 50 anyway, not in my age group. Post race he told me he is a "hiblit" -- "Had it but lost it." Heh-heh. Mile five rolls. It has some downhill, but ends with a nasty wall just after the turn onto Dedham Street. 30:21, 6:25. Hmmm, that's a few seconds faster than my 5 mile time from two weeks ago, and now the hard stuff is all behind me. It's still uphill the rest of the way, but gradual. Mr. Hiblit's evidently still got it compared to me, because he's pulling away and kicking ass, passing three runners. I find my rhythm, and I know I'm running decent. I'm going to break 38... I even catch one guy, but not the other two. The last 1.2m ends up taking 7:14, a 6 flat pace, and I finish in 37:35, 12th overall, 3rd in the male 40-49. What do you know, that's a 6:04 pace. So it wasn't exactly negative splits, but it was a good finish, and it wasn't another slide. Thanks for reading.
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