What's this? a 29er bike? Yup, it belongs to Michelle. It's her Niner mountain bike. Small size frame, A&W Rootbeer color, Rockshox Reba fork, Shimano hydraulics, and other cool stuff. Very nice bike.
Here we go. December 2008. It's time to start training for the 2009 road season. That means, dust off the road bike and ride the hills. There are a lot of training programs on the street and the internet to follow. You just have to pick the right training plan that fits within your lifestyle. Pick and choose. I will follow the standard 4 week cycle with peaking in 6 months. Within a week, I will try to have two important ride days, Tuesdays and Saturdays, to improve my weaknesses. My early season training plan is as follows:
I had no idea that I was racing above an old City dump. Cauze, I think that I ran over several old washing machines, hubcaps, and beer bottles. Holly smokes. The terrain is terrible. Lots of 3" ripples everywhere. Nothing is smooth. For this race, I choose to battle against the C racers on my singlespeed cx bike. I re-armed the bike with new gearing, 42x18. This gear proved to be fairly good on the bumpy flat sections. However, once on the pavement, I lost time by spinning out, that is, too slow on the pavement. The two steep hill sections were perfectly fine with the 42x18 gearing, as long as, I had momentum going into the hill and a clear landing path on top. I did have a couple issues with the bike: 1) For the second race in a row, the seatpost dropped a little lower during the race and the saddle rocked back and forth. It's time to dump the seat post. 2) By going with brake only levers, the grip area is a little smaller and a bit sketchy. I'm certain that I lost plenty of time with the lame brake only levers since I was trying to keep the bike under control over the bumpy section. Very uncomfortable situation. So, it's time to drop the drop bars and install a mou
ntain bike flat bar with longer stem. The flat bars will allow me to easily hammer on the most bumpy terrains while remaining in control of the bike. The Schwable front tire worked perfectly again. I choose to use a smooth-ish WTB tire on the back. It worked fine on the very steep climb sections and hooked-up perfectly on the flats. I'll probably stick with this tire combination for the rest of the series. I did have some 
problems with the pedals. At the top of the climb, I found myself popping out of them, which resulted in loosing 3 or 4 spots. This problem happened 3 times during the race. Overall, I'm getting better at racing the singlespeed. There is a learning curve on how to race it against the multispeed bikes. Lesson A: you just have to assume that you'll spin-out on the very flat sections. This means, you'll need to make up time on the remainder of the course. The biggest hurdle for most new cyclocross racers is the barrier section. It's really not that difficult to do. Just approach the barrier slowly, get off the bike, gently walk over the obstacle, and remount the bike. Thru time and practice, you'll pick-up technique and speed. The video above shows Jeff of Rio Strada Racing. Jeff is one of the most smoooothest guys at the barrier section. He's got several methods to get over the barriers. I think the video above shows the best one. The best place to practice is at a park. Instead of using barriers, just use leaves or shadows on the ground. It's a nice start. It took me a couple of years to get the method down. Tip: notice in the video that Jeff gently places the bike on the ground after going over the final barrier. This prevents the chain from jumping off the chainring and you're automatically given a few style points.
