I reconfigured the Cannondale last night, and it is in cyclocross mode. I always chuckle a bit when I finished this conversion, as there’s only about two months out of the year that this bike actually rides in its native dress. I do need to bite the bullet and swap out the rear mech cable. I’ve been avoiding since I hate fiddling with indexed shifting, but the poor interface at the downtube stop is causing ghost shifts. Not good. I rode around Schenley for an hour, re-acquainting myself with mounting and dis-mounting. Good fun. I need to home-brew some barriers to bring over to the park for morning practice.

I’m also trying to determine how to approach ‘cross season. It looks like I’ll be doing at least four races with minimal non-family travel (which constitutes a packed month for Pittsburgh). I signed up for the B (3/4) race at Murrysville. I’m a little intimidated by this, because I know that some of the competition has actually been training. Part of me wants to wimp out and do the C race, but since I won that last year, it would feel like sandbagging. I suppose as long as I don’t get lapped, it’s all good, and still good fun. I’ll likely still do the C race in the Philly race, because I assume that those easterners are faster than I am. I’ll likely race Bs in the Fayetteville race, but we’ll see how Grove City goes, I guess.

Posted on 11 September 2009