So Sunday was the Season Finale, the Grillz Memorial race in Georgetown Maine. I was looking forward to this race all week, and feeling strong on the few rides I did during the week. I did well here last year; in fact it was in here, the last race of last season that I secured the Senior I title. This year I already have the Senior I title locked up, but I went to race to try Secure my position as 3rd in the overall points series. I was hopping for a top 5 finish...
On my Thursday night ride I noticed some drivetrain issues, I though I had isolated it to the cassette so Saturday I replaced it and had everything working fine in the repair stand. So Sunday morning I wake up at 5am, drive 180 miles to Reid State Park in Georgetown Maine and feel ready to race. However as I head out to warm up quickly noticed that as soon as I put some power to the pedals in any kind of rough section the chain drops from the chain ring. Everything else is working fine in the drivetrain, clean, quick shifts but when the suspension is active and I am hammering it drops the chain. I am not expert mechanic and everything that I can fix with confidence seems to be working fine, so I choose to try and ride this one out.
This is a mass start, so the Elites went out and the whole expert class went out 1 minute back of them. The starting line goes straight down a double track into the parking lot then pulls a u-turn and heads right into the singletrack where it inevitably bottlenecks. Knowing this, I lined up early to get a good starting position and put it up in the big ring ready to hammer. As we headed into the singletrack I had a pretty good position about 10 back in a field of 40 or so. The first 100 yards of singletrack is pretty gnarly singletrack with a short steep climb that ends up being a hike a bike in race conditions. This worked out better for me anyway as my drivetrain would not have held the chain if I tried to power up this. As I got back on the bike I held my position but I had to "baby" my bike along the choppy, rooty, rocky typical Maine course for fear of dropping the chain. Sure enough about a 1/2 mile in, it happened. Being so close to the start the expert class was still bunched together so as I pulled over to put the chain back on over half the field passed me. Then about another quarter mile up, again the chain drops. Now at this point the whole expert field is gone.
The only reason I was at this race was to try and get some overall expert points, but with the entire field well ahead of me, I could forget about that. However I figured that if I woke up this early and drove this far, I was gonna ride my bike. I finished the lap and headed out for another. As I made my way around the second lap I dropped the chain again a few more times. Each time the chain dropped it would make this horrific metal snapping sound. I soon realized that I should wrap it up rather than do more damage to my bike. So at the end of the second lap I pulled myself out of the race.
DNF the last race of the season, what a bummer. I was really looking forward to this race and with a week of preparing to have to end it so early kind of felt like getting blue balled. At least I got to see some hot bike on bike action...
On my Thursday night ride I noticed some drivetrain issues, I though I had isolated it to the cassette so Saturday I replaced it and had everything working fine in the repair stand. So Sunday morning I wake up at 5am, drive 180 miles to Reid State Park in Georgetown Maine and feel ready to race. However as I head out to warm up quickly noticed that as soon as I put some power to the pedals in any kind of rough section the chain drops from the chain ring. Everything else is working fine in the drivetrain, clean, quick shifts but when the suspension is active and I am hammering it drops the chain. I am not expert mechanic and everything that I can fix with confidence seems to be working fine, so I choose to try and ride this one out.
This is a mass start, so the Elites went out and the whole expert class went out 1 minute back of them. The starting line goes straight down a double track into the parking lot then pulls a u-turn and heads right into the singletrack where it inevitably bottlenecks. Knowing this, I lined up early to get a good starting position and put it up in the big ring ready to hammer. As we headed into the singletrack I had a pretty good position about 10 back in a field of 40 or so. The first 100 yards of singletrack is pretty gnarly singletrack with a short steep climb that ends up being a hike a bike in race conditions. This worked out better for me anyway as my drivetrain would not have held the chain if I tried to power up this. As I got back on the bike I held my position but I had to "baby" my bike along the choppy, rooty, rocky typical Maine course for fear of dropping the chain. Sure enough about a 1/2 mile in, it happened. Being so close to the start the expert class was still bunched together so as I pulled over to put the chain back on over half the field passed me. Then about another quarter mile up, again the chain drops. Now at this point the whole expert field is gone.
The only reason I was at this race was to try and get some overall expert points, but with the entire field well ahead of me, I could forget about that. However I figured that if I woke up this early and drove this far, I was gonna ride my bike. I finished the lap and headed out for another. As I made my way around the second lap I dropped the chain again a few more times. Each time the chain dropped it would make this horrific metal snapping sound. I soon realized that I should wrap it up rather than do more damage to my bike. So at the end of the second lap I pulled myself out of the race.
DNF the last race of the season, what a bummer. I was really looking forward to this race and with a week of preparing to have to end it so early kind of felt like getting blue balled. At least I got to see some hot bike on bike action...
3 comments:
serves you right, riding gears...
did you swap out the chain when you swapped out the cassette? i think those new fangled drivetrains are really finicky and if your chain was worn but the cassette was fresh it may have been skipping just enough to derail the chain...
only needs to be off by about 3-4mm and the pin will hit the tooth and force the chain up then it starts a domino effect and you drop. only on trail fix would have been to mess with your limit screws in an attempt to keep the derailler close enough so there wasnt enough room to drop but then you prob would have been grinding the chain in a few gears.
The chain is about a month old so I don't think that is it; but I did find some crap in the cabel housing, could have been the source.
More to come on this story...
yeah if your indexing was off a tad due to cable tension issues it could possibly have the same effect as i mentioned before.
under just the stress of spinning pedals on the stand or on course the amount the dérailleur is off due to crap indexing wont be noticed but as soon as you torque you could induce a skip and eventual drop because the dérailleur didnt have the chain where it needed to be.
same thing though with a finicky high performance drivetrain it only needs about 3-4 mm.
if that was the case you may have been able to somewhat fix that on trail by fooling with your barrel adjusters where the cable enters the dérailleur, jerry rig at best though.
hindsight = 20/20
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