Back on the CX bike

I made some changes to the TCX this year. In the past two years the bike was set up much like my road bike. I always felt too stretched out and in a position that I couldn't get power...especially when riding on grass.

So the body position change was made by the stem change. I got a shorter stem and pointed it angled up. This allows to me to get power from my hoods and not having to feel like I have to ride the tops of the bars all the time.

The other changes that I made was the components. Because of upgrades to the road bike, I was able to take old road parts and put it on this bike. I upgraded the 9-speed set up with 10-speed Ultegra. I also replaced all the cables, new chain and took the bar top brake levers off.

So I rode it to work yesterday with the plan of riding Seashore this morning when I got off. This is exactly what happened. It was a good ride. There were a lot of runners at Seashore and most of them were pissing me off. I think I felt a little like Pungo motorist when trying to pass groups of 30+ riders. These groups of runners were high school teams I think. They were riding all in groups of 5 to 10. A few groups, as they ran towards me, would spread out and see how far over they could push me. I think next time I will call their bluffs and ride straight through them. But I was trying to be nice, I was taking it easy so I wasn't flying, so I passed slowly and gave everyone plenty of room. The sign at the beginning of the trail asks riders to give warning when passing and be polite. On a number of occasions, the runners I was attempting to pass were plugged into their iPods and couldn't hear the warnings as I tried to pass them, so I still scared the crap out of them because they were also usually running all together taking up the whole trail.

Oh well, school will be back in session soon and the trail will be less crowded that time of morning.

The dirt and sand, mixed with my high sweat content, created a nice mud paste on my legs. But that's what cyclocross is all about, right?