Category Archives: Cyclocross

Dear diary …

Oh yeah, just briefly ...

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So I was pretty happy yesterday when I found out that Brad Norman had secured permission from BCC for his cyclocross race. Emailed a couple of people to tell them about it, planned to post something here, etc etc. And Scott Kirton announced the date for the Ipswich cyclocross as well!

Then I thought: what I need is a way to ensure that briztreadley’s massive and ever-growing readership knows exactly which cool events are on the horizon. Because when I find out about fun stuff you can do on a bike, I don’t want to keep it to myself! I want the world to know, so you & they & I can ride/race together.

So check out the briztreadley Events Calendar (especially the two cyclocross races in July and August). Let me know of great events that you are organising that I can plug. And let’s go for a ride. On-road, dirt-road, grass-track, off-road singletrack. (Church house gin house, schoolhouse outhouse) It’s all fun on your bike.

One word short of a great headline

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Specialized are still sponsoring Ned Overend. He’s only been with the company since 1987. How cool is that? Ned has just won the World Masters cyclocross championship. Just seems like an opportunity missed in the headline there.

If it’s not already obvious Ned Overend is an inspiration to me (and many others). Check out this interview from a couple of years ago, which includes this exchange:

Q: What gets you more fired up, dirt or road?

A: A combination of the two, actually. This is what keeps me fresh. I really enjoy cyclo-cross as well. Mountain biking on singletrack is always an amazing experience for me.

Yes. Me too, Ned.

And last year, the toughest hill climb race in the US, Mt Washington. Ned Overend (56 years old) 1st, Tinker Juarez (50 years old) 2nd.

Ned and Tinker racing NORBA, back in the 90s.

Tinker races for Cannondale, maybe for as long as Ned’s been on a Specialized. I know these are commercial arrangements, but I like what it says about both the companies involved and the racers themselves.

The Trickle-down Theory of Bicycle Economics, or How To Get Around N+1

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So I didn’t race the Great Escape Gravity Enduro, and I am bummed about that. Several lovely friends said encouraging things to me during the week, but you don’t have to be ‘deficit-focused’ to realise when you have massively stuffed up. Maybe I’ve learned something out of this, who knows.

But life goes on. And my happy news is that my oldest bike has had a make-over, and is once again a star member of the briztreadley stable.

I bought the Shogun Alpine GT sometime in the mid-late 90s. It was a touring bike in its original spec: drop bars, triple crank, Shimano STX components, cantilever brakes (that were never any good), TIG-welded steel frame made in Taiwan.

Touring bikes were hard to find at the time … the legendary Gemini World Randonneur had just stopped production a year before, and this is well before the release of the Surly Long Haul Trucker that is so popular these days. Cannondale and Trek both made tourers that were well beyond my budget at the time, but weren’t much better specced. St Kilda Cycles was the only place to buy the Shogun Alpine GT, so I ordered one over the phone/fax, and it was sent up to Flashing Pedals to be built up.

This was my main bike for about seven years, until I got the Frezoni (for my 40th).  And it covered all duties. Mostly commuting, some touring, three Sydney-to-Surfers rides and eventually some bunch rides (Bruce got me into that).

But when faster road bikes such as the Frezoni and later the Enigma came along, the Shogun was pushed to the back of the queue. For a while it was kept in repair so that Adrian could ride it on the weekly Wednesday morning kids ride that finished at McDonalds. Adrian stopped going on that ride when he was in year 10, I think, and he’s just about to turn 22.

So to save it from sitting in the shed, I had it turned into a flat-bar single speed, and it lived at the BQ office, for rides around the city.

But the turning point for the remake of the Shogun came early this year, when I picked up a set of Shimano XTR v-brakes from a bloke on the MTB Dirt forum. And put them on the Shogun.

All of a sudden I liked riding the Shogun. But I have never got hold of the single-speed thing. So I wondered how I could resurrect the Shogun without spending much money.

Inspiration came a couple of months ago, courtesy of Handsome Bicycles’ release of the XOXO.

And the resulting rebuild finally came together yesterday.

Thanks Dean for helping me with the build.

The new spec includes:

  • 1 x 9 gearing, with Campag Veloce bits, left over after the Frezoni went to 10-speed recently. Downtube shifter scavenged from The Bicycle Revolution, operating in friction mode (that’s right, no indexed gears!!)
  • Soma Moustache handlebar (thanks Epic Cycles), Tektro brake levers that pull the right amount of cable for v-brakes (thanks Mark Grulke)
  • 700 x 32 Specialized ‘cross’ tyres. I like the feel of them so far, but I haven’t been for a long ride yet. The wheels were once on my Frezoni, they are Velocity Deep V rims (legendary tough), teamed with Campag Veloce hubs.
  • Those marvellous Shimano XTR v-brakes. I know I go on about them, but they are the best brakes I’ve ever had on a road machine.

So that’s a urban-warrior, dirt-road-demon, go-anywhere-anytime, sort of bike. It’s the opposite of ‘specialised’. I am going to have fun on this machine, wherever it goes.

Oof! Zap! J-Pow!

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I’m really enjoying the Behind The Barriers videos that follow the adventures of cyclocross racer Jeremy Powers, also known as J-Pow. The only way to improve them would be the occasional fight scene …

The whole Behind The Barriers series (we’re up to Season 2, number six at present) can be found here.

All things bicycle, ZZZ-style

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So my good friend Eleanor roped me in to be a guest with her on ‘At the Local’ on 4ZZZ last Saturday. The link above is the result (minus the songs Dom played), which I will admit that I enjoyed listening back to. Thanks Dom for having us on your show.

The content is all good ZZZ stuff, as we talk about women and cycling and the sub-cultures that emerge in an activity like cycling that is becoming more and more mainstream. And if you listen long enough, you get to hear Ali McLatchie talk with considerable verve about women in bike polo. Cool.

(For those who would like to know what music they play on 4ZZZ, here’s the song Dom played in tribute to Ali. You better press play on that, cos I predict that this is the one and only time that Peaches is going to feature on this blog.)

As an added bonus to this whole thing, you get to listen to Elle’s ‘radio voice’. There’s just something that comes out occasionally in her accent that gives a hint of either her Filipino mum or time spent overseas. I can’t quite identify it, but the effect is (like everything else about Eleanor) quite adorable.

Hugs & kisses for Handsome

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This is as cool as the other side of the pillow. Handsome Cycles, a small bicycle maker in Minnesota, has brought out the XOXO.

Handsome Cycles XOXO left, the original Bridgestone XO-1 below left.

Back when the Internet was young, in the mid-90s, I used to follow the fortunes, the ups and downs, of Bridgestone Cycles. Yes, the Japanese tyre company. It may still be the case that in Japan that Bridgestone still make bicycles, I don’t know.

But in the early and mid 90s, Bridgestone bicycles in the USA were cool. Because the product manager was a certain Grant Petersen, who was never afraid to swim against the tide of popular opinion. They called him a retro-grouch as a result, but I think it was more than he wasn’t worried about saying what he thought was good about innovations in bicycle design, and what wasn’t.

And the most iconic of an iconic range of Bridgestone bikes was the XO-1. It was a bike which had 26 inch wheels (mtb size), rigid fork, road geometry, odd looking moustache handlebars, and cantilever brakes. At the time, it was described as a do-it-all bike. I would call it just about the perfect dirt-road bike.

And Handsome’s XOXO is a copy, a tribute, to the XO-1.

What with Rapha’s videos, website and magazines featuring so much dirt-road riding, and the surgence of cyclocross in Australia (I can’t call it a resurgence if its never been popular before), it seems that the XOXO would be timely, if it was available in Australia. Sadly, its even more niche than cyclocross so it will never get to Australia.

There’s lots of so-called commuter bikes around these days. They are mostly flat-bar road bikes, usually with low-end (cheap) components, and are designed around narrow tyres, and not for taking off-bitumen.

That said, you could make a pretty good dirt-road bike from a Surly Cross-Check or Long Haul Trucker frame, and there are lots of people doing that. And there’s also the Kona Dew series, which is a superior commuter bike or light tourer, it would be pretty cool on dirt too.

But luckily for me, I already have a bike that’s perfect for this, just with a tweak or two. My Shogun Alpine GT has spent the last few years as a singlespeed city bike. The drivetrain is pretty much shot, and has had no work since forever. But in the last six months or so it got given some sweet XTR v-brakes (courtesy of a MTB Dirt member), which makes it much nicer to ride. Think I need to find some sweeping moustache style bars, and make a eight or nine-speed dirt-roader.

Emma had some swoopy flat bars like that once on her Cotic singlespeed … wonder if they’re still in her shed? Hmmm. (No, Em, this isn’t a test to see if you’re reading).

Update: Swoopy bars on short-term loan from Em to see if I like them. The model is the Sparrow, from SomaFab.

I have a Deore mtb derailleur at home, so I reckon a trip to Bicycle Rev for some down-tube shifters might be the next thing. And an 8-speed cassette.