thinking of racing some cross this fall

[chuckster12]

I'd like to keep my fitness well into fall/ winter this year, so I'm thinking about some cross racing. I have a couple of questions/ concerns:

Bike - My commuter is a Surly crosscheck. Any reason why it won't be suitable to test the waters this fall? It is set up as a fixed gear for the commute, how stupid is singlespeed cross for a newbie?


My knees: years of running have left me with the beginning stages of arthritis in my left knee. Are most courses fairly short on the dismount sections? I don't want to get anything started with the knee since it does just fine with cycling/ yoga etc.

Any suggestions from locals on choosing a couple of races in the Denver area would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts/ advice.

Chuck

[riceburner]

Cross check should be fine just put at least 9 or ten gears on it- single on front and cassette in back, your knee will thank you. dismount sections are generally short, but course dependent.

[fil]

you would be fine running it as a ss especially for giving cross a try

[Bruce K]

Chuck-

We could have beat this to death had we got the chance to ride this week.

The bike should be fine but a lot would depend on the courses as to whether the SS setup will work or not.

You can do the single ring front and a 9 speed rear with a bar end for fairly short money and you will have way more fun

BK

[djg]

The bike should be fine -- a little chunky, but I've seen people race them at levels better than 4 and there's no reason at all you cannot try a few 4/C races with it just to check it out.

Single chainring is fine if you want, but I wouldn't start out in cross with single speed. On some courses you'll be fine; on some . . . well, you'll be shouldering a heavy bike more often than you'd need to -- really, you can just hunt around for a good deal on some very basic parts to give yourself some gearing options. There are people who love going ss and if you do that offroad just a ton, more power to you, but it's not how I'd start out.

[chuckster12]

thanks for all of the good advice so far. My crosscheck was a complete Surly build, so I have the necessary parts to go back to either 1x9 or compact double.
Chuck

[c-record]

Cross rules! You might end up in the deep end. Think: second bike, 'A' race bike, carbon wheels, tubulars, cross specific training. Seriously, this stuff is fun.

[chuckster12]

yeah I know - I'm already guilty of checking out the Salsa cross frame in the classifieds :)

[allegretto]

yeah, i'm already droolin' over a Moots Psychlo X

[c-record]

Moooots...

[lemonlaug]

So hopefully this qualifies as an acceptable degree of drift, but I'm in pretty much exactly same situation at OP, with a surly CC set up as a single speed, and I've been thinking about going 1x9.

So what do I need to know? Any subtleties involved in that setup? What's a good chain ring size?

[c-record]

So hopefully this qualifies as an acceptable degree of drift, but I'm in pretty much exactly same situation at OP, with a surly CC set up as a single speed, and I've been thinking about going 1x9.

So what do I need to know? Any subtleties involved in that setup? What's a good chain ring size?

Most from slow to fast run the 42T up front.

[runtimmyc]

Most from slow to fast run the 42T up front.

a 39T ring is also pretty good. I ran that last year and it was pretty difficult for me to run out of gears with an 11t in the back.

[lemonlaug]

Cool. Thanks people. I may just do it.

[acorn_user]

I confess I mostly used my 34t inner ring last year. In fact, I don't remember using the big ring at all last year. Although I didn't do the races that would have required it. I find that I never regret having that extra ratio on the bottom end... did have a comical high cadence sprint to the line with a guy on an SS mtb at one race though :)