CYCLOCROSS PRACTICE
WEDNESDAYS at 5:30 PM
SATURDAYS at 8:30 AM
COME ON OUT AND PLAY IN THE MUD! WE WILL BE
PRACTICING SKILLS AND CONDITIONING NECESSARY
FOR CYCLOCROSS RIDING AND RACING!
MEET IN FRONT OF MARTIN-SWISS CYCLES
CONFIRM YOUR ATTENDENCE
–
Dave Albert, CSCS
Premier Studio Performance
4710 St-Ambrose Suite 156
Montreal, Quebec H4C 2C7
Tel: 514-934-6078
cel: 514-602-3488
I attended these practices all last season and had a great time. They are a lot of fun, low-key, and you’ll learn a lot of bike handling skills. You should all feel free to attend and take advantage of these free coached workouts with Dave.
Contact Dave with any questions at: davidr.albert@gmail.com
Ride on! Patrick
The first Martin Swiss cyclocross practice of the 2006 season is this Saturday at 8:30, meeting at Martin-Swiss Cycles.
–
Dave Albert, CSCS
Premier Studio Performance
4710 St-Ambrose Suite 156
Montreal, Quebec H4C 2C7
Tel: 514-934-6078
cel: 514-602-3488
Patrick-
Sounds like fun, I might start going. But well…Uh…What would you say would be the minimum I would need to buy for my road bike to make it cross compatible or at least somewhat? I’m sure you remember from your grad student days that budgets are sometimes really limited…
If I just slap some knobby tires on a set of sturdy wheels am I good to go? Not sure If my bike (or budget) would be compatible with cantilever style cross brakes. Are they necessary or just nice to have as they probably fill less with mud?
Any Ideas?
THanks,
Peter
Hi Peter (et al),
To attend a CX practice you could probably get away with putting some knobby CX tires on an older road bike, esp if you have an older steel frame. You’d want to adjust the fit a bit, lowering the saddle about 1cm (you’ll have to be able to swing your leg right over it from the ground when mounting), and raise the stem about 1cm (to put you a bit higher to be able to see the upcoming terrain–more important than being aero. Take off any bottle cages, pumps, and other do-dads, and just carry a water bottle with you in your jersey pocket. To pick up your frame and put it over your shoulder you’ll want that stuff out of the way.
Newer road bike frames would likely not have enough frame clearance for a 700c x 32 tire (in fact, a real issue these days are road frames that can’t accomodate anything more than a 700c x 23 tire, like the Cervelo P3, when in the real world on crappy roads a 700C x 25 tire would absorb a lot more shock and pintch less than a narrow tire).
At the CX practice you’ll practice mounting and dismounting (over and over again) so you would not likely use your nice road frame. A low end mountain bike would be preferable for that purpose–you could get a low end commuter-type MTB off of the McGill classifieds for the same price that you might have payed for a strong set (say, Mavic rims laced to 105 hubs with the highest spoke count you can get) of road wheels. (I’ve seen some great ones in the ~$200-300 that would be more than suitable for CX.)
Quality CX bikes these days are actually pretty cheep. The Kona Jake retails about $900 CAD and the Jake the Snake, with full 105 parts and an Easton aluminum frame is about $1200 and is the gold standard for CX bikes. You can of course always pay even more, but you don’t need to.
To attend a cyclocross race you could get away with it on a MTB, though you’d prob feel a little out of place as in Quebec most people are using CX bikes. The terrain isn’t too technical at most races so the bigger gears on the CX bike is better, though you could easily swap off the cassette for a smaller one, and just remove the granny gear on the MTB all together–you won’t need it. You wouldn’t be able to use a road bike with CX tires at a CX race–the UCI rules state that you can’t use caliper brakes (and they just wouldn’t stop you quick enough anyway).
I highly recommend it–I had a blast with it last year!
Bye for now,
Patrick
We had a nice group consisting of Amanda, Paul, Sam, Cliff as well as our podium threats Alex and Matt this morning for our first practice. We did some technical drills up at Mont-Royal, as well as some great conditioning sets on mini-cross courses. We had a great time, and I felt great being able to help our riders improve their technique for dismounts and remounts.
For next week, we will be holding practices on Monday and Wednesday, meeting at 5:30pm at Martin-Swiss cycles for more of the same. Wednesday, we should have a great cross rider, and Provincial Champion, Benoit Simard, helping out with his experience and skill.
Dave Albert, CSCS
Premier Studio Performance
4710 St-Ambrose Suite 156
Montreal, Quebec H4C 2C7
Tel: 514-934-6078
cel: 514-602-3488
Hello Everyone,
Who remembers the movie “Predator” starring Governor Arnold? Do you remember the scene when the alien with heat-vision is hunting him and he covers himself completely with mud and hides against a river bank? The camera pans across the river bank, then all you see is these 2 white eyes open…that is what we looked like after the race on at Chateauguay on Saturday - except my eyes were bloodshot, not white (I could not see straight until the next morning!). Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures and I have not found any posted anywhere yet.
Amanda and I pre-rode the course in the rain, and I mistakenly said that “I don’t think the course will change much and should be pretty solid unless it rains a tonne in the next hour or two”; the rain Gods must love to torment 'crossers. At the Elite start, the rain started (again) 5min before the start when everyone was shedding clothing. This resulted in several mild french porfanities. The rain gods reacted by turning it up a notch. This resulted in louder and more offensive french porfanity. The rain gods really did not like that, and it was a full-on deluge of rain by the go-time. That said, it was a blast in the end and I love how my 'cross tires handled in the mix of gooey and slippery/slimy mud.
The course should have been fast and flat. With only two 30-foot-long run ups per lap. Once again the barriers seemed ginormous, but the organizers insisted that they were the 40cm regulation (maybe that was before they lifted them out of the mud and put them on a hill). The course started with about 1km of straight wood-chip trail (this turned into 3-4inches of power-sapping softness very quickly), then it was a triple barrier on rough grass, a wood-plank bridge and some winding ATV double track with big puddles and berms on the corners for the next 0.75km. Then 0.5 km of bump-your-shoulders-off-the-trees slimy single track before 180degree switch backs on grass running up and down a small tubing hill. This made for about a 7min lap with the most tasking part being the straight 1km at the start.
Amanda placed 5th in a deeper than usual women’s field. I got cold at the start, hesitated in the slime for the first 2 laps, but fought my way back to a 3rd place finish. Andre stuck it out the end in a race that saw many abandons.
Who’s going to Quebec City this weekend coming up? I found some info on at www.vmqca.qc.ca groupe de discussion - parc St-Jean Baptiste at/near Sainte-Foy. Standard start times. Amanda and I had talked about driving up the Sunday morning.
Good work Amanda and David at Willingston - how come there was not any mud?
Paul
Thats awesome patrick! our UVM race was similar. Downpour and serious mudd. and we had to carry bikes up the muddies cliff. I got all clean when i face planted into a river though. It was as steep in and out as a deep water trough, by all the riding caused a small boulder to get right in the center and I just endo’d right into it. Check out the pictures of the bikes. I learned that SPD’s suck in the mud that day…