Oh yeah, this just happened!  Rain and MUD in the dark!  Holy cow, that was pretty awesome.

I took the hole shot and got a special prime of Stumptown coffee.  That was cool.  Then I slowly got passed by several people.  Jeff Standish and I had it out for a lap or two, that was pretty fun.  Riding in the heavy mud was great.  It's so good to have a ride like that under my belt already.  I think I'm getting better, slowly.  Must be patient.

Having a light would have been a good thing tonight.  I brought one, but it didn't fit on my 31.8 bars.  After half way through, it didn't matter anymore.  It took forever to get cleaned up in the dark but it's all good now.  What a blast.

It's on!  Now that we have the first Cross Crusade race under our belts, the cyclocross season is officially in full swing here in Portland.  As is tradition,  the series started off at Alpenrose Dairy.  This is a great venue, and the course is always good and hard.  Today was no exception with a surprisingly heavy feeling course, with a lot of big bumps to inaugurate our backs into cyclocross mode.

I usually have a hard time here because it's the first big race of the season and I'm not really "in shape."   Further, this course requires a lot of "strength" and "conditioning" and "hard work," which means one must be "in shape."   I had an okay race, but nothing exciting.  Overall, I'd say it's a performance worthy of a "meh," but at least I wasn't anywhere near last place.

I reckon I felt better than I did at Barlow last weekend.  I had one minor crash, which hurt the ribs and I (in hindsight) kind of rode a little tenderly after that.  If I can keep the training going, I hope to catch up to a lot of my peers in a few weeks.  Just in time for the muddy races.  Until then, I've got to face the music and go up against a lot of guys who have worked harder and are more prepared than I am.  C'est La Vie.

It was nice to be out there again, to line up with a lot of the same faces I've seen in years past.  The crowds were wonderful.  I heard my name a dozen times every lap.  Totally rad.

Next week:  Ranier High School.  This is another course that requires "cardiovascular conditioning."  I'll probably go anyway.  At least the ridiculously big climb is partially paved and not that bumpy.  Goal:  keep improving, getting stronger and smoother.   I also really need to figure out my remounts.  I've been doing this for a long  time, and I think I've had 2-3 good ones in that time.  Somebody please help me.

Photo courtesy sosvelo

The big season opener is tomorrow.  It's gonna be nuts. 

Still haven't gotten word from the doc about my rib/s.  It's probably fine.  Still hurting, but I went for a good ride on Friday and everything  but standing was quite bearable.   No problem.

See you at Alpenrose, 1500 crazy cyclocross racers.  My goal is to not get last place.  Totally doable. 

I made it to the first Blind Date cyclocross race Wednesday night.  Since it wasn't until 8:00, and I was able to go straight after soccer practice.  It worked out pretty well.

I felt better in this race.  A lot better than Sunday.  I was sitting in 2nd place for the first lap and a half before I went down hard after lapping wheels in a corner.  It hurt like crazy.  It took me a while to get up, and then get the bike operable, but I kept going and was still in an okay position I think.  A few laps later, my left crank fell off.  That wasn't very awesome.  I went and got a wrench, tightened back on and kept riding for another 5 or 6 laps.  I lost probably almost 10 minutes doing that, so I'm sure I got last place, but at least I was the fastest DFL'er of the day.

I had a lot of mechanical mishaps today.  Crank fell off, and then the stem came loose from the steerer in my crash and kept slowly turning more and more sideways as I rode.  I finally had to stop and straighten it out after it got beyond 30 degrees out of alignment.  Kind of trippy to look down and see your bars so sideways!  My seat slipped down, too.  But that's fine.  I should have everything dialed in on both bikes by Sunday.

I'm hurting pretty bad today.  I am hoping I didn't crack a rib, but I have a feeling that's what happened.  My daughters were enjoying seeing daddy writhing in pain when they made him laugh.  I'm waiting on x-rays to see, but all that will really give me is a time frame for how long until I'm feeling better. 

The good part is I felt good out there.  I am not going fast, but I was faster.  I was quite comfortable on the bike, especially in the corners.  It was my first ride on tubeless tires this year.  My oh my, I've missed them so.  I'm trying a new tire out for this dryer weather.   I only had it on the front but it will be on both wheels this Sunday.

So I'll fix things up and hopefully make it to Alpenrose for the Cross Crusade kickoff!  You can't stop me.  You can't!  Ow.

Photo courtesy Dave Roth, dmroth.com

Oops, I don't think I was supposed to put this photo here...you can click here to look at it.

Ah yes, this sums it up.  Tired, defeated, still pushing and having a good time.

Alright, so I decided to go hit Barlow High School for a little race before the big opener at Alpenrose.

What a mess.

We started off, things were okay, but then people started riding away from me.  The bumps just killed me today, in more ways than one.

It took me a while to realize my front brake was rubbing my rim.  Well, I knew something was wrong, but when I actually tried to spin the wheel with my hand and it would not budge, I knew I had a little problem.   Turns out I hit a bump and it knocked my left hood down the bars a bit, which  tightened the brake to the rim and also screwed up my front derailleur.   I just didn't think it was rubbing that hard.  I hate it when that happens.  Took me a couple laps to realize this.

My rear wheel also managed to come loose, so I had to stop and tighten that up.  And I lost a chain at the top of a run-up.   Lots of stopping today, but that wasn't my biggest problem.

Biggest problem:  I'm slow, kids.  Slow.  But it's okay, I'll keep plugging away and we'll see how things go.

I had fun, so that's what I'm going with for my Barlow race report:  Slow, but fun.

Photo courtesy Dave Roth.

While it's looking like disc brakes are going to take over in a few years, we're still using Cantilever brakes these days.

Cantilever brakes work okay, but they aren't great.  You've got your low-profile brakes such as the Avid Shorty, which are easy to set up but can squeal like a pig.  You've got your wide-profile brakes such as the TRP EuroX, which have awesome rim/pad clearance but are a bit underpowered.    There's also the problem of fork chatter, where applying the front brake makes the whole bike shake and shudder...not fun.

Enter the v-brake.  For mountain bikes, this was the go-to brake type before disc brakes took over.  They work great and are very efficient at transferring force into stopping power.   However, the road levers we use in cyclocross don't pull enough cable for these brakes to work.  Think of it as a leverage thing.  A longer lever requires you to move the lever a greater distance.   So if you want to use normal v-brakes with road levers, forget about it.  Not going to work.  But there are workarounds.

Cable Adapters:
You can get a cable adapter (e.g. Travel Agents) to effectively change how much cable your road levers pull, making v-brakes usable.  I did this on my single speed.  Works great:

Mini-V Brakes:
If you shorten the arm length of a v-brake, you shorten the lever and therefore don't need to pull as much cable.  That's why mini-v brakes can work with road levers.

Mini-V brakes seem to have arm lengths between 8 and 9 centimeters.  The shorter the arm, the less power, but the more pad travel.  I think pad travel is the most important factor here, because even the above pictured mini-v brake with a travel agent adapter works fine. 

TRP makes a sweet mini-v brake targeted for cyclocross usage:

These have 9 centimeter arms, which some SRAM and (I believe) Campy users had trouble with because those road levers don't quite pull enough cable for even minimal pad clearance.  So TRP came up with the 8.4, which obviously has 8.4cm arms.  That will give more pad/rim clearance, which as I said is most important factor.   I don't know why anyone would buy the cx9 (9cm) model when you can get more pad travel from the 8.4s.  So if you're going to buy these, get the 8.4s.

Tektro also makes some viable alternatives.   They made some TRP knock-offs in the RX6 (9cm arms, do not want), and the RX5 (8.5cm arms, better).  Not as cool as the TRPs, but they probably work fine.

What you may not know, however, is that BMX kiddies have been using mini-v brakes for years, and there are some good, cheap brake sets available.  After doing a lot of poking around, I found the Tektro 926 has 8cm arms (more pad/rim clearance!).  These things were cheap...I think I got the pair for under 30 bucks.  I also added a Jagwire adjustable noodle, which is quite handy.  The reason I chose these is I wasn't sure if the rim/pad clearance was going to work for me, so this was a cheap gamble.  Also, the 8cm arms would give me the most pad clearance I could get with a mini-v brake. 

How do they work?
I got a test ride in today with the 926 brakes in Forest Park.  Included in the ride was a trip down Fire Lane 5, which is quite demanding of brakes. 

The brakes performed well.  I could slow down with less hand force than my wide-profile cantis.  The pad/rim clearance is okay, at least for dry conditions.  I've been able to set the pads up loose, such that I have a little wiggle room should one of my wheels get knocked a little out of true...that stuff happens all the time in cyclocross, so it's stupid to not plan for it.

These brakes exceeded my expectations.  I'm pretty pumped.  And it's worth noting that I'm using the stock brake pads.  I'm sure they're nothing special, so I'm anxious to see how they perform with some Kool Stop Salmon pads.  It can only get better.

Minimize Cable Play
If you're going to give these a try, I think the name of the game is minimizing cable play.  When you just barely squeeze the levers, you want the pads to barely move.  If you have any kinks in your brake cables, replace them.  If your cable housing is dirty, replace it.  Otherwise, when you squeeze the brake lever, the cable first needs to get tight, then it will start braking.  You really don't have any cable pull to spare!  These brakes are only going to work well if the system is clean and there is little to no play in the cables.

Conclusion:
They work!  But that rim/pad clearance could be a deal breaker if your wheels get wobbly or in the mud.

So...I guess this is why you buy the higher-end Egg Beater pedals:

One of the wings broke off today while riding around.  The other sides work fine, so maybe I'll keep it on the trainer bike. 

I still think these pedals are the best thing for cyclocross.  Just go with the stainless steel models.

Well, I've almost got both bikes put together.   I've been experimenting with the B bike, which built up pretty nicely.

I put a few green parts on, and when mixed with the red decals looks like Christmas.  It's festive but stupid looking, and I don't care!

I got some cheap mini V brakes set up and they work good, exceeding my expectations.  I'll do a separate write-up on this later.

I really like Fizik's bar tape.  It's super durable and has a nice feel to it.  I'm done with cork tape.

I'm experimenting with a new saddle, too.  Specialized makes their BG saddles in three widths.  I chose the middle one to see how it felt compared to my normal saddle (Selle Italia SLR).  It's pretty comfortable.