My post-race cyclocross bike maintenance regimen…

The ChiCrossCup crew put on a fantastic UCI race weekend over New Year’s Eve / New Year’s Day. I won’t try to summarize for you, because there are tons of great stories, comments, photos and videos to be found on the web, starting here and here and here. It was muddy – really muddy, and due to a miscommunication on my part, my two-person volunteer pit crew for Sunday’s race was not present and I did the entire race (until I got pulled, that is) without a bike change.  I love the post-race pictures of my bike below:

New Red crankset revealed!!

Firecrest rim profile is super aerodynamic.  

Ultralight crankset was a huge advantage this weekend.

I thought this might be a good opportunity to share my post-race bike maintenance regimen with you. After every muddy race, and there have been several this year, I have a two-step plan:

1. Hose off the bike

2. Oil the chain

That’s it. In fact, since I built up my “A” bike for this year in September, I’ve done 29 races and subjected my bike to a lot of power washing, and I am still using all the original bearings, cable and housing, chain, brake pads, etc. I’ve had to make a couple of bike repairs due to a soft rear derailleur hanger (finally cured with a steel one-off hanger), but all the typical maintenance items are still going strong. 

On a final note, while there are still a couple of weeks left in my CX season, I think my body decided to go in to winter hibernation a month ago. I’m still having great fun out there and I really appreciate all the heckles and cheers, folks. Thanks so much!