Crossed up

Photo pinched from TA photo...

Sunday saw the championships of the Scottish cyclocross series at Plean, near Stirling. It had snowed and although the air temp was around 2 degree centigrade, as soon as the water splashed up on to the chamois, it got cold. Marty and myself used Belgian knee warmers, and the rest of the crew was made up of Superfans Trina and Chris handing out the heinies with peperami, and £1 primes, and Anja (recent transfer from New Zealand) and G-funk and jac. Telly savalas gave a nod to recent passed Evel with the stars and bars capes and the whole shebang plowed through the mud and the snow for an hour. As you could predict it was hard going. Some of the mild climbing had the singlespeeders grinding out of the saddle to keep any forward progress, but in the end a good time had.

Anja clocked up third with Eileen getting a 1st right at the wire. A prospect for sure. The blokes had to be content with finishing, but g-funk did us proud with a DFL. So DFL in fact the organisers didnt clock he'd finished and ended up phoning him at home! good work there...

Problems...well there were a few. My front wheel took a beating after jumping off a stump onto a slidey off camber landing. Seems that using a disc on that wheel (it is 3 years old) has caused the spokes to loosen a little and i had a taco from lap one onwards. No punctures ( 37c twisters and 70psi put paid to that) but on trying to retrue the wheel today seems its beyond repair....so an A317, and some supercomp spokes are coming my way...amazing how hard it is to find the build info from shimano for their xtr hubs...fortunately there are some resources to help...

Damon Rinard
DT swiss
Spoke calculator