Couple of figures from the weekend’s National XC champs at Hadleigh Park:
Senior male winner – 21.5 kph.
Senior female winner – 18.4 kph.

I’ve had a bit of trouble with some Conti race kings. Schwalbe have been fine (as GB says, go for snakeskin) and Specialized 2bliss are easy to get up too.

If you want an alternative to a Racing Ralph, try a Specialized Fasttrak.

The endurance limit of steel is typically half the tensile strength. Granted, scratches, chips, dents, imperfect welds and corrosion will reduce this. I’ll let you know how my heavy lugged and brazed frame is getting on in another 20 years.

Some guff is talked about steel – it’s certainly the best material for custom builders, but repairable? At a price, yes. Carbon is probably easier to repair than high-end steel. Carbon also gives you the best balance of stiffness and comfort, if it’s done properly. Where I reckon steel wins hands-down is durability. Provided the tubes aren’t ridiculously thin-walled, a steel frame will resist knocks better than anything else, will never ever fail by fatigue and if you treat the inside of the tubes with anti-rust stuff and make sure the BB drain hole is clear, it won’t rust away either. That’s why I’m still riding a 21-year old Pinarello Treviso and expect to be doing so for as long as I can pedal. Plus, it looks elegant, even with full length mudguards.

I’ve had no problems with wolftooth rings (only manufacturer I’ve found for 135 bcd)and bog-standard 105 and ultegra mechs.

horseist>walker>mtber
still seems silly/arbitrary that way round

That’s the class system for you.

Make life easy for yourself and attack when it’s unexpected. Everyone expects an attack on hills and you have to fight super-hard to get a gap, so on the flat or descent after the hill instead. Wait until a breakaway has been caught and everyone stops for a breather, then go like the clappers. You can even put in a gentle attack to stir the pot and with a bit of encouragement, you’ll find that the speed picks up considerably and no-one actually knows why. You just sit in a watch. When they realise they’re hooning along for no reason, they’ll slow down. That’s your cue. Or go after a prime sprint. Follow the sprinters but don’t blow your box going for the line, just keep on after the prime winners ease up.

I’ve used all these tactics to win or place in 3/4 and 2nd cat races. They don’t work on E12s though; they are fast and smart. You will get your legs ripped off but it will be fun trying – better than being an anonymous sitter-in.

Another vote for the Crank Bros M-19. No small loose parts to drop, high quality hex bits, a chain tool that actually works and it’s practically indestructible. Mine’s old and got a few rust spots on it but I’ve used it, abused it and jumped up and down on it, using the 8 mm bit to undo a crank bolt.

Do MTB riders make better roadies than what? Pastry chefs? Barristers? MTBers get pretty fit and might be able to climb ok, but even XC racing is all about short hard bursts and periods of recovery. That doesn’t prepare you well for sustained hard efforts.

Tests for senior winners and a random or two at all National Trophy cyclocrosses. Same for Elite MTB National races.

Get one! I’ve got a 2014 Epic Marathon. Great fun to ride, covers the ground really well and comfortable enough to go all day. I like the brain gadget – feels like riding a hardtail until things get rough, then there’s a barely-noticeable ‘clunk’ and you’re automatically into magic carpet mode. Only 1 kg heavier than an equivalent carbon hardtail,(with 1×10 it weighs 11 kg with spds, two cages and all the built-in tool goodies) but not cheap.

In its natural state…

Eat. Your legs might feel tired but they’ll never keep going if you haven’t got the fuel. Your first ride could easily consume 1500 to 2000 kcal and if you’re really going for it, deplete completely your glycogen stores. Unless you eat carbs like a starved horse, you won’t top those up ready for the next day’s thrash. Typically, a trained 70 kg man could store 1800 cal of glycogen. To replace that, you’d have to eat half a kilo of dry pasta.

That would be why sets of 30-second flat-out sprint efforts with a 30-second recovery would help

You can’t race XC effectively with an effort-to-recovery ratio of 1. If it takes you 30 s of gentle spinning to get your puff back after a magnificent 30 s climb, you’ll be left far behind. Molgrips is right though – it’s often quicker to put in some extra effort up a short climb, but there’s a balance between keeping momentum up it and maintaining speed afterwards.

Leg strength helps but it’s not a determining factor. Look at Grant Ferguson. He looks like he’s made out of knotted string and I bet he can’t leg press much in absolute terms, but he has the engine to use a high proportion of that strength for a high proportion of the time.

Ok molgrips, maybe we’re differing on definitions of sprinting. Get out of the saddle and give it some anaerobic beans to maintain momentum up a climb, yes, I agree absolutely. But that’s not what I understood you meant by sprinting. If you blast up a Gorrick climb like you described in your original post and go all out over the top, everyone who kept going a bit more steadily will ride past you while your lungs are hanging out. Well, that’s what’d happen to me if I tried it. Of course, if you can recover really quickly from all out efforts, that may work well for you.
BTW, I read somewhere that the Sky team did lots of training sessions where they rode at 1 hr TT pace, put in big efforts for a minute to represent an attack, then dropped back down to TT pace to recover (!) Ouch.

Going back to the reason the OP is putting himself through this purgatory on the bike, will having stronger muscles help you go faster? A bit, but not on their own. Sprinting up hills is all very well, but what happens during an XC race? Unless it’s the first climb, you’re already cabbaged at the bottom of the hill, you suffer up it and keep pushing until you can begin to recover a bit on the downs or through a wiggly bit. You wouldn’t sprint in a race, except at the very beginning or very end. Typical race efforts involve riding at a steady hard pace, going into the red for a bit, then recovering while still pushing on, ready for the next effort. You may get a bit of a breather going downhill. For this sort of riding, muscular strength is not the limiting factor.

So ripping a punctured tub off and fitting a pre-glued one is slower…

I would imagine so, but it probably depends how you glued it on to start with. It takes me 15 minutes, with tools and swearing, to remove a well-glued cross tub indoors. With cold stiff glue and cold fingers it’d be a bloody nightmare. If you’ve got a weak glue job, ok, I can see it might be doable. If you use tape and deliberately leave a section unstuck to get you started, that might work too. (I’ve heard triathletes used to do that). If it’s raining and everything is getting wet and mucky, I’d be surprised if you got the replacement to stick at all.

Ooo, what race did you do, mikewsmith? Wasn’t the Lanzarote one was it?

I reckon different features are important in different disciplines. Once you’ve got a reliable bike with ok handling, in road I think you can get away with nearly anything. To be competitive in CX you might want to add decent tubs for a muddy day (and another bike). An MTB needs appropriate tyres and having good brakes can add enormously to your confidence. Weight and stiffness and other carbon-based niceties are way down the list. As has been said, sort the engine and the driver out first.

Inside. Wolftooth components 42 on Force cranks, no keeper or guard ring, with Ultegra or 105 rear mechs and 10 speed cassettes, 12-27 or 11-28. Only 3 mm of clearance between the teeth and the chainstay but never a problem with clogging there. In fact, getting rid of a chainring and the frontmech has opened up the BB area and means it takes much longer to bung up. Even without a clutch mech, only had the chain come off once all season, in the super claggy mud at Bradford.

The traditionalist’s advice to avoid a stompy pedal stroke would be to push your foot forwards through the top of the stroke and to flex your ankle at the bottom of the stroke. The latter can also be visualised as scraping dog poo off the sole of your shoe. Keep your upper body as still as possible while pedalling. Whatever you do, don’t try to pull up. This puts a lot of strain on your hip flexors and they aren’t really man enough for the job.

adsh has some good points. Thinking about your racing and riding is so important and so often neglected. The best advice I ever heard on this subject was to always be asking yourself, ‘why am I doing this thing?’ and if you didn’t have a good answer, stop it and do something more considered. This applies equally in races (Why am I on the front of the bunch? Why am I taking a breather?) and training. (Am I going hard enough? Or too hard?) Get into this habit and you’ll be some way to making the most of your time and ability.

33 lbs the pair. Well, they are certainly rigid and sort of 29ers.

Is it possible you feel more ‘spinny’ because you’re missing a bit of leverage? I find I push harder in CX than in MTB racing because the events are shorter, so you’re trying harder, plus it’s bloody pointless trying to spin your way across a bumpy field, through heavy mud or up a short, steep bank. You need a smooth pedal stroke and a lower cadence to get anywhere.

Yes. It felt like a weight had been taken off my poor, bowed shoulders.

‘New Air Spring’ sounds like a joke part. Are they kept on the same shelf as the tartan paint, next to the long weights?

That was bloody brilliant. After Battle on the Beach, I was expecting something good and I wasn’t disappointed. Quirky, well-run, entertaining events like this deserve to succeed so a big ‘well done’ to Matt Page and his team and here’s hoping for more of the same next year.

You could try the Ortlieb mini saddlebag. It’s waterproof, tough and has a folding closure, so there’s no zip to get full of muck and sieze up. Only downside is that the clip attaching it to the saddle is a bit rattly so I put a toestrap round mine to keep it quiet.

You really don’t need another bike and if you look after it, a derailleur-geared road bike will last perfectly well in rubbish weather. I’d strongly recommend full length mudguards as they protect you and the bike from lots of road muck. Forget about having a pristine drivetrain, just keep it nice and oily and black with regular applications of gloopy wet weather lube and give it the odd rinse if it’s been salty. You might want wider tyres but equally, lowering the pressure a bit gives you more grip and comfort.

The courts take a dim view of vigilantism. Probably rightly so, considering the alternative.

On the road, bigger wheels are less aerodynamic than smaller ones, all other things being equal, but they roll over bumps better. (Moultons have suspension because their tiny wheels mean they need it to get the same ride as a normal bike.) Which one is faster? Depends on your speed and the state of the road.

I’d add another option:
d) see what they were doing and fit in with it, probably asking if it was ok first.
Think about it. They’re doing their thing, probably organised after a fashion, why would they appreciate someone coming in and ‘seeing what they were made of’ or otherwise interfering?
Transpose the situation to a kickabout in a local park. It’s a public place so you’ve every right to be there, but would you just run into to the middle of the game? Even without kicking the ball, would you start marking people and making runs?

Paul Milnes cycles have some good cheap CXers. Have a look at the Forme bikes, they look raceable. Spend a few quid on decent brake blocks, a sensible sized big ring (44 or 46t should do) and you’ll still have enough left over for a spare pair of wheels and a bunch of race entry fees.

Large Stumpy Epic Marathon, only changes to stock are going tubeless, 1×10 XT gears and a Thomson elite layback post, 24 lbs on the nose with 2 cages and XT pedals.

Docs Proplugs. Very effective.

Commuting a bit slower than you were going, at a low Z2 pace, I reckon my MTB (27 km/h, fast-ish knobblies at 30 psi) is about 3 km/h slower than a road bike (30 km/h 23 mm slicks, 90 psi). This is gauged over a few rides. The effort feels the same and my HR is pretty much the same. Just for information, the powertap on my road bike tells me that the average power at that speed is roughly 175 W.

It’s been resprayed since this photo was taken and used for nice summer rides, but the mudguards are going back on for the winter.

As an fairly frequent road rider myself, I’ve occasionally ended up on main roads for different reasons. Sometimes I took a wrong turn, or because I was lost, or new to an area and having an explore or because I actually wanted to take a direct route. It’s no fun and certainly not pleasant but not all cycling is, all the time. Sometimes you’ve just got to get somewhere.

I’ve got one. It holds a tube, levers, couple of gas cartridges, multitool, patches and boot. It’s waterproof and the folding closure is reliable, unlike zips, which get full of muck, jam and break. The only downside is it rattles a bit so I wrap a toestrap round it and the saddle rails.