I have a road race (Pine Flat) coming up in two weeks. Course description includes "Road surface ranges from good to fair, some narrow, some traffic; many cattleguards; one twisty very narrow fast descent". Should I stick with my R-SYS wheels or should the Reynolds DV46 rims be ok on the cattle guards?

Sounds like a good time. Does the ambulance hang out around the cattle guard waiting for the first person to taco their wheel between the bars?

Scout the course.

My first encounters with these things on a road bike were last summer. I found there was a wide variation in their nature. If you're light (sub 180), I wouldn't be terribly concerned.

Maybe the race is interesting like this??

do you have a set of wheels that aren't worth 1+K?

go fast, hop, land softly

They aren't bad, the Reynolds will be fine...

I do. Actually, I don't have a set of wheels that I've paid more than $1K for...

most of the ones around here arent anything to worry about.

My bike and I combined come in around 160...

Your best option is still to scout the course. Nothing beats firsthand information about conditions on the ground.

I'll try, but I don't know how much time I will have to scout a 60 mile course considering that the race is at 8 in the morning and I have an 80 mile race the day before a few hours away.

From what i remember most of the cattle guards are after the finish on the 10 mile trip back to the cars. The road surface is actually pretty good.

I would only leave the carbons off if it starts to rain. Oh and there's not much flat to be found despite the name.

Are you going? So far the Platinum crowd looks to be the same set as Vegas, with maybe a few that are still undecided. Cantua Creek and Pine flat will be my first races on my new Tarmac. Tarmac + Reynolds =

Nope, I'll be in Santa Rosa racing a crit instead but I think you'll have your hands full with the 2 ZTeam guys in the 4's.

The race is pretty wide open and not to twisty except one section which you will drive on the way in. Other than that it is pretty hard to get away till the last 8 miles when the road goes up.

Jump it?!

Just don't come up short. There's often a lip at either end, and you don't want to hit that with the back tire.

There was one with a lip that I used to regularly jump on training rides. A few years later I was racing over it. Because it was a race I was eager to make it across, so I started my jump just a little early which meant that I landed a bit short. I only pinch flatted, but it was still a dumb way to lose a lot of places.


Now I just run over them. That's safer.

Cantua: Start at the top of the hill, a lot of long, flat frontage road, turn around and come back up the hill. You turn around at the top of the hill and do it again, then finish at the top. I missed winning there by a couple of feet last year. Key at Cantua is to be in any decent size break, or not get separated on the hill.

Pine Flat:

The big climb really starts up around mile 45 or so. You can't miss it. There's some smaller, intermediate climbs before that might let something go, but unless they are way out there with several riders and very strong, the climb will take them out. The top of the big climb kicks to double digits, gear accordingly. Last year I used a 53/40 and 11/26 and was grinding a bit.

You absolutely need to stay within yourself on both this (and the finishing climb). If you blow you aren't going to be able to recover and will lose positions, a lot if the pack is tight.

You'll descend one more time, but unless your really working well with others, it's not enough to catch the people who beat you over the top. Explain this to the guys if you're trying to catch back on. Then you hit the finishing climb which is progressively steeper, as I recall it's around a mile or so. Good place to crack people.

The guards aren't an issue at all, I did it last year on carbons.

What are these cattle guards of which you speak?

One of the thousands of ingenious inventions to come out of the Republic of Texas.


Cattle are afraid/unable to walk over them, thus eliminating the need for gates for cars to pass through. Put this where the gate would be, and it has the same effect: keeping the cattle in, while allowing you and your pickup truck out.

The before picture:

Me too. Well, maybe 158.

I'd go with carbon. I plan to use my Zipp 303's.

I was going to do Cantua the day before too, but decided to go skip it and go to Pine Flat early insead and check out the course on Saturday afternoon.

There are a great many sorts of cattle grids out there - some are made of 'I' beams that have flat tops, some are made of round pipes. And of course the spacing varies.

Obviously the closer the spacing the better, and the 'I' beam ones will create less bounce.

I've got two on my commute, but they're not so bad - if you go across them really fast or really slow, it's just sort of a vibration.

I've also been to races where they got some of those steel plates that road crews use to put over holes in roads and put them over the grids. That was not entirely pleasant anyway, given the thickness of the steel plate (like 2cm) and the fact that it was a time trial... One was at the bottom of a hill too - hitting a 2cm tall object at 35mph while in TT bars is not enjoyable. So after the first lap I bunny hopped it from the bullhorns.

But to plan a race with cattle grids? Doesn't seem like the best idea from a race organiser that I've come across...

Just bunny hop them.