Macho Man beef'd up

Twitter keeps telling me that #cxiscoming.  Its also telling me #crossisdead.  WHICH ONE IS IRONIC?! Although I think my favorite is #crossisdad due to the fact that so many guys who race cross are middle aged fathers.

I'm officially reg'd for some races and I'm ready to get this experiment rolling but my bike was still in 'road mode' until yesterday.  Conversion to cx mode was incredibly easy and just reaffirmed my thoughts that this is the best build idea I've ever had.  So versatile and so orange.

Conversion really only consisted of new chainrings and tires and swapping pedals.  Thats it.  BOOM cross mode.  I also splurged on some bar tape.  Lizard Skins DSP 2.5mm, pricey but AMAZING.  Its a bit 'rubbery' for lack of a better term but the increase in shock absorption is awesome and its even got a bit of stickum to it.  If you can get over the price tag I Highly recommend it (with a capital H).

Swapped out the 50/34 compact road setup for a more cx friendly 46/36.  Its still an ok range of gears for general road riding so I probably could still put the 25c tires back on there if I wanted to do some longer road rides this fall.  Although I definitely missed the 34 on a couple of the steeper dirt roads back by the house on my test ride this morning.  I actually got away without needing to drop the FD a bit.  Shifting was fine on the stand and on the ride this morning but I'll probably drop it a bit before racing to make sure I'm not dropping the chain constantly.

For tires I went with the Clemente Crusade PDX.  Eric is all about the Clementes and they seem to make some great stuff.  Particularly in the gravel and cx arena.  They mounted up awesome.  Ever since #shittywrists became a thing I have a huge appreciation for tire manufacturers who size stuff correctly so you don't need to give yourself a hernia getting the tire on the rim.  Not going to run them tubeless this year.  I've had so many issues with tubeless on my MTB that I've just assumed that the Universe doesnt have that in the cards for me this year.  Plus I've heard some horror stories of tubeless setups not working well with cx at all but I guess we'll see.  They seem like a good all-round tire and traction was great on the jeep roads today.

I'll probably be modifying some of my lunch rides to have some cx practice mixed in.  Maybe ride Gyro and ride around in fields and run up embankments and the what not.  Maybe jump some barriers, who knows I don't know how this stuff works.

keep CX weird