Back to reality - back to remembering how to ride a bike. I few weeks off and shift of focus has made a difference.
I love cyclocross, and I have since first racing it circa-1999. I love the weather, the concept, the culture and the equipment. Yeah, definitely the equipment.
It goes back to when a cross-bike didn't really exist - they were just frames with cobbled-together touring parts and old mountain bike cantilevers. So ingenuity and creativity was always part of the mechanical culture. I remember my first cross "bike" had a blend of 3 different Shimano groups from all disceplines.
Now the category is well-defined, and it's tires that differentiate. I wanted to get into the spirit this cross season, even with all the distractions beforehand, so I started stocking up on tires early. Then a few more... then suddenly, I had the equivalent of a very well-stocked bike shop in my basement.
Part of it was over-compensation, because I knew fitness would lag this year, and part of it was excess for the sake of excess. I think in our 2016 world, tubulars in the fall are about as good as any other commodity. #tirepimp
So now I have a ton of tires, and limited time to glue them and reestablish fitness. Classic first weeks of cross season scenario: Ride, coat of glue. Ride, coat of glue. Mount tires, race on the weekend. Repeat. Add aquaseal, repeat. It wears pretty thin after a while.
And the racing is on. First day was definitely rough, I forget how to drive a bike. Broken carbon was a result, and this will also add to the rest of the cross season to-do list. Happiness smells like glue fumes.
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