Cyclocross Racing - First race in the snow.

Looks like we may get a few inches of dumped on us here in central Indiana on Saturday. My race is on Sunday, being CAT 4 my group will be the first out on the course. Any pointers? Tire selection, etc? I've got some narrower 700x30's, might they be better in the snow than 32's? This should be lots of fun regardless! :D

Have you done a OVCX race yet as a 4? The fields are much bigger than the two races you have done. MUCH bigger. It was a soupy freeze/thaw situation for the racing in Dayton last weekend. I used Michelin Mud2s and was 5th out of almost 30 riders in my field. That's what I'm using this weekend and I'll be launching with you. If it is super bad, I will be on my MTB. I've done plenty of snow riding over the years. I am comfortable with either my X bike or my MTB in this situation but be prepared for your cantilever brakes to be totally useless if there is much snow because they will cake up around the rim and just freeze up. The good news is the race is only 35 minutes. Depending on the snow type, fatter tires with lower pressure work better.

Let's just say that the OVCX races has 2-3 red zone kids racing 4s that should be 3s. They've been killing the field all year.

Nope, I haven't done an OCVX yet this year, I'm both looking forward to the crowd and a bit intimidated. I'll take your advice on the tires and go fatter. Thanks! One plus I suppose is I've got discs on the CX bike, hopefully I'll avoid some of those issues, most likely not. See you there on Sunday.

good luck, and pedal fast. Depending on how rutted it is, you might be in for a big upper body workout like you've never got from cycling before.

If you have discs, you should be fine. I'm guessing Avid BB7 road?

It's not bad...just think of it as having fun with 75-80 strangers that all want to beat you and most likely will elbow you, cut you off or in general be hard to get around. That's because the Cat 4, cat 4 35+ and Cat 4 45+ all launch at the same time.

I sometimes call out a pass to another rider if I see he's all over the place. It goes back to my MTB racing. It doesn't seem to matter what level but in the MTB races that I do...the passes are pretty much always called out because of the limited room.



Nope, I haven't done an OCVX yet this year, I'm both looking forward to the crowd and a bit intimidated. I'll take your advice on the tires and go fatter. Thanks! One plus I suppose is I've got discs on the CX bike, hopefully I'll avoid some of those issues, most likely not. See you there on Sunday.

No, they're BB5r's, the BB7's would be great with the better adjustability but they came with the bike.

Yep, looks like a big crowd.. 83 pre-registered.

so how did you do? I was there both days. Day two was epic. I was 6th and 8th. My teammate won his series and both of his races.

I only raced Sunday, Cat 4 35+, 11th or so across the line, 4th in my age, 2nd in the state. Got myself a nice silver medal. I was pretty happy with that being my third race. The snow was fun, really made that off camber climb on the far west side of the course a doozy. I saw lots of photographers there, do you know of anywhere pics might have been posted?

check the results on crossresults.com -- people post pic links there.