Anyone have strong opinions about compact 50/34 chainsets? I've been noticing that my cadence is a little lower than where I'd like it to be, both on climbs and flats (I end up in the small ring a bunch to avoid cross-chaining). 

Looking at a gear calculator, moving from my current 52/36 to 50/34 should get me where I want to be, but I'm not sure if it would be the right move or worthwhile...

Get a cadence meter if you don't already have one.

If you want to ride a higher cadence, shift one or two cogs in the rear and simply ride a higher cadence.

Aim for 100 rpm's -- it might take a few weeks until it feels natural.

That said, it is 100% in your head, you wont need it, but still, if you believe strongly that your cadence is influenced by two teeth in the front, then make the change to 50/34.

I wouldn't say I have strong opinions but I have always been content with my 53/39 EXCEPT in extremely hilly areas.  but even in those areas, i'm happy to have the 53 on the downhills!

My commuter is a cyclocross bike, 46/36 and I thought I'd need a 50 tooth but honestly 46/36 is fine when I'm hauling extra pounds of stuff to work...I've been surprised how much time I spend in the little ring.  maybe I'm just lame.

I'm no training guru but maybe ignorance is bliss when it comes to cadence?  I have no cadence meter, no idea what I'm pedaling at because I've never had one, and maybe ignorance is bliss when it comes to how many RPMs you're doing?  If you're not underperforming or getting injured, isn't whatever you pedal at good enough?

re: crosschaining...SRAM's new groupos are called 22 because they're designed to crosschain without FD rub.  it wears faster and it noiser when cross-chained, but there is no rub on the FD cage as long as it's set up properly.  i can confirm this from my 53/39 and 46/46 22 speed setups

IMO there are very few roads/routes around the immediate NYC vicinity that you'll need extreme ends of gearing for any real amount of time.  If you have enough cogs in the back to shift into and spin, then that's the simplest solution.  You can also look into getting a long cage RD and a 32t cassette cog in the back if the 36x28 isn't cutting it.  Might be somewhat more flexible to just swap cassettes depending on ride/race.

just had a realization that i thought i'd share with anyone who tries to adjust their rear derailleur b-screw to have exactly 6mm gap (per SRAM specifications).  don't use a 6mm hex wrench to measure the gap!  or if you do, be sure to rotate it slightly.  the diameter of a "6mm" hex wrench is actually 6.8mm, not 6.  it's only 6mm flat to flat.

obviously this is crucial to proper drivetrain setup, personal happiness, achieving nirvana, and preservation of world order generally.  i mean just imagine what could go wrong with an adjustment that's .8mm off?!

@SebastianVidal late to this but I made the switch from 53/39 to 50/36 a few months ago and am loving the compact. My sprint is not any slower, and I've been feeling better (read: new PRs) on hills, which is partially training but having attacked up some hills on the 39 with the 28 in back, the 36 is definitely better for me.

Another consideration is crank length. Have Ilya at Redbeard take a look at how you're on the bike now - if you are making the switch to compact, it's worth addressing crank length too. The leverage you have on the cranks can impact power significantly.

FWIW, I did read an article recently that increasing cadence from the 60-90 range to the 90-120 range should increase speed around 10%. Not sure where those numbers are from, though, so...grain of salt.

Hey all - looking for some cx build advice from our elder statespeople of cross.

My winter project is going to be building up a ride that I'll use mainly for commuting, but also for cx next season. I def want disc, which rules out vintage. Seems like All City and Surly are safe bets for cx frames that are on the more affordable end of the spectrum, and which people used for things other than cross. Any other brands I should be looking at? Would you race a Surly or All City?

** edit ** I would consider rim brake options if it opens up possibilities significantly… 

If discs, then consider Giant. Talk to redbeard, specifically:
https://www.giant-bicycles.com/en-us/bikes/model/tcx.slr.2/26059/92775/

When it comes to racing, if you must choose between All City and Surly, All City wins.

If non discs, then consider an ebay frame, or one from the many facebook groups, lots of people unload their CX gear this time of year. But frankly, at those prices, give Giant a real consideration.

-- an addition about the Giant, Bruce and Dale both have one, at least Dale didn't have a good experience setting up the mechanical discs brakes. Talk to them too.

Ben,

What's wrong with you AWOL for commuting/CX?

It's got disc brakes, you can run UCI legal 33mm CX tires on those wheels as well as your monster adventure tires for getting around/tomfoolery.

Not that I want to dissuade you from buying a bicycle (never get between a man and his bicycles) but one of the cool things about CX is you can ride what you've got. For most CX races you can ride anything between and including a road bike with wider clearance, to a full-suspension mountain bike. Don't let not having a dedicated CX bike be your limiting factor to getting out and getting rad. 

@Dan Reiners I honestly hadn't considered it as I assumed the handling and geometry wouldn't be able to cope with more technical riding. In that case, I'll def join y'all the next time you're doing Cunningham!

Dan Reiners said:

Not that I want to dissuade you from buying a bicycle (never get between a man and his bicycles) but one of the cool things about CX is you can ride what you've got. For most CX races you can ride anything between and including a road bike with wider clearance, to a full-suspension mountain bike. Don't let not having a dedicated CX bike be your limiting factor to getting out and getting rad. 

this is true!  to my everlasting shame, a guy on a fat bike finished ahead of me the other week (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3CXTEq4n7Q).  unless youre racing UCI you are encouraged to do whatever you want

One of the things I really dislike about the bike industry is narrowslicing everything to really hyperspecific segments. You can ride just about any bike anywhere. I've ridden full-on New England mountain bike races on a CX bike. I crushed the climb and then proceeded to lose places through the rocky rooty descent and had to run one section of baby head rocks, but 99% of the course was rideable.

Look at mountain biking where you have XC racing bikes, enduro bikes, all-mountain bikes, and downhill bikes, all with differences in head tube angles and suspension-travel. This is all before we start talking wheel size variations of all of the above from 26", 29", 27.5" and 650B. Sure a full-boinger downhill bike might be a little heavy to ride 10 miles uphill, but it will still ride up inclines.

This "Adventure/Gravel/Monster Cross" bike category annoys me to no end, because it is just trying to sell you something you already have with some slight variations on the theme, like by adding some extra bottle mounting eyelets or a slightly longer chainstay. Most of what you can ride on a gravel bike you can ride on a road bike with 28mm tires. 90% of riders already have a road, cx, mountain bike, or heck even a beater hybrid bike they could retrofit to make work for gravel riding

Look at what Yangs did with his old Schwinn hybrid to make it a CX bike.  


FYI baby seat it makes it very tough to do a CX remount without kicking the kid in the face, so UCI recommends not racing with the child on the bicycle.

Dan Reiners said:

Brendan

Or you could go with Carogna tape like I am and avoiding all of that (except for the lamb's blood, because you don't ever mess with the tubular god).

Yesterday's CX Clinic i was literally ripping it up with my tubulars taped on using the Carogna tape. they were rock solid, even at the point where I had less than 20psi in the front and we were pushing the pace on the turning course. I had to give it a little more air to keep the contact patch solid, but never had an issue with the tire giving or moving off the rim.

Lets see how it holds up for the times Harry tries to ride into my back tire.

Okay let's be fair here though.  My Crosscut frame was one of the nicer ones Schwinn offered at the time - double butted True Temper CroMo tubes and fork all around, and I also added pretty-nice-for-it's-era Cinelli bars and stem.  Even if I added lighter wheels and modern groupset, I would *maybe* net a 2lbs difference from it's current form and I still wouldn't even be in the same weight and stiffness category of an off the shelf Origin 8 CX specific bike 2 sizes larger (Theirry had one at the cross clinic on Sunday).  And the larger diameter, sometimes flattened top tubes makes them so much more comfortable to shoulder than the narrow vintage tubes on my bike.

(BTW the Crosscut frame was even outsourced and built by Kissena appropriate sponsor Giant in Taiwan regardless of what all the "designed and engineered" in USA stickers claim!)

Anyway my point is that while I LOVE vintage-modern builds and finding new ways of recycling old frames and components, sometimes newer bikes have significant and meaningful gains and may present a better value in the long run.

As Megatron once uttered in the classic 1986 Transformers: The Movie,"Wait...I...still...function..." before being jettisoned out of the space ship like so much space junk by his backstabbing flunky, Star Scream, sometimes we too must be backstabbing flunkies and look towards the future.  

Also don't ask how the backstabbing turned out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXtehH_abRQ

David,

It is good to see you're doing the time honored cyclocross tradition. Establishing a strong background of excuses for poor performance. Blaming your equipment is a good practice and laying that foundation is essential. These can be broken into several categories:

1. Age of your bike. This works for any bicycle that isn't from the current model year (or in CX bikes the next model year), the only folks that can't complain about this are people racing the 2017 models of any CX bike.
2. Course specific equipment choices. e.g. I chose the wrong size single ring for this particularly hilly course.
   
3. Broken parts...This is where an older bike helps. sometimes having a sacrificial rear derailleur is a good thing, or a saddle where the rails are ready to crack from repeated remounts.
   
4. Braking performance. If you can't slow or stop it impacts your accelerations, so that is always a good excuse.
5. Conditions specific, this is usually either tire or pressure related excuses. for example choosing to race file treads on a muddy course, or going with lower PSI than the rest of the field. These can also be pedal/shoe related, like not having the right spikes for the run-up or pedals not clearing enough mud.
   

I love that you've got some new ones. I am particularly enamored of the narrow vintage tubes make shouldering the bike harder. I believe I will have to find a heckle to go with that. I think I've found the kit you should wear for CX races.

BMX top tube cover FTW.

Yang I like the 1980's style of that.

More like this Theirry:

I want to lengthen the cleat mounting slots on my mtb shoes.

A Dremel might be best.  But as I don't have one, I'm wondering about faking it.  Perhaps wrapping a drill bit with some sandpaper, or just drilling.

Thoughts on what to do?

not sure if anyone else was riding in the epic rainstorm that hit queens from 5-6 tonight, but I was and let me tell you that I have never been happier to have hydraulic disc brakes.  holy cow.  it was raining so hard that it hurt when it hit you in the eyes and cars were going <20 mph b/c their visibility was impaired.  but my brakes were still there!

good thing i didn't crash or i surely would have turned all my fingers into forcemeat with those pesky rotors

a rainstorm in the city is hardly a disc brake endorsement....it's like saying so glad I was in my Humvee as I had to park on the grass....and Yang's fetish with antique Schwinn bicycles is approaching my beef jerky fetish.  

I rode home in that rain. I was soaked but the Diacomp 500's slowed me down.

jim_nelson said:

I rode home in that rain. I was soaked but the Diacomp 500's slowed me down.

Like Brendan, you were riding disc brakes.  

But your rotors are larger and don't heat up as much.  And your caliper can stop more quickly with less force thanks to greater leverage.

Diacomp 500 = Poor man campy record  That's the bizzombizzles right there.

Also having a good wet braking rubber compound for rim braking makes a y'uuuuge difference on rim brakes.

I'm assuming disc brakes have an advantage in the wet since the calipers basically use sandpaper to create friction on the rotors instead of rubber?

BTW Yackmando (electric avenue), my 1980s Schwinn obsession only has maybe 3 more itches to scratch before I'm over it.  I'd love to own a Waterford Paramount from that period, a Cimarron MTB, and only because the pink paint job is rare a 1987 Prelude.

mugwump said:

I want to lengthen the cleat mounting slots on my mtb shoes.

A Dremel might be best.  But as I don't have one, I'm wondering about faking it.  Perhaps wrapping a drill bit with some sandpaper, or just drilling.

Thoughts on what to do?

I say just use an appropriate diameter bit to extend the slot.  I would be mindful of how thick the sole is where you're extending into so you don't drill straight through (though it's probably not a big deal)