The Cycling House splits time between Tucson and Missoula.  This past weekend is one of our favorite Montana weekends.  The Rolling Thunder Cyclocross Race brings full time staff, part time staff, and TCH Friends together for a good time.

We’ve never had a cyclocross camp at TCH, but the sport is a big part of our what we do.  Here are the top 5 tricks for newbies:

5.  Take off your water bottle cage.

4.  Make sure your chain is tight in your biggest gear in the front and biggest cog in the back.  Take links out until its tight.

3.  For clincher tires don’t run to low of pressure.  It’s a fine line between pinch flatting and hooking up.  In your first couple of races it’s probably more important to finish, so error on the side of 50 psi.  Once you finish a couple races and don’t want to get bounced around, experiment with lower pressure.  If you get into the sport consider some tubular wheels, like the HED Ardennes, where you can run low pressure without flatting.

2.  Warmup – minimum 2 laps on the course, and 45m of riding with some hard efforts.  Ideally 4-5 laps on the course and 1hr of warmup.

1.  Suffer, it should feel like running the mile in gym class only for 60 minutes :)