Frites En Mayo Velo Club : Alpha CX -Late, Late Report

I spent another week on the germ tube…… so the race reports have been lagging.

Alpha CX is a race promoted by Adam from Alpha Bicycles in Centennial, CO. Alpha Bikes is one of he few bike shops in the Denver area where you can walk in, request a cantilever brake straddle cable, and instead of getting a completely blank look from the mechanic with 3 weeks of OJT, you actually get a fricken straddle cable! If you ask the questions, you will also learn all you ever wanted about brake set-up and what pads work best in what conditions. In other words, Adam, Pat, and the rest of the crew at Alpha Bikes Hobla CX and carry the parts in-stock to keep a CX hound up and running.

The FMVC crew decided that this would be a good race to double-dip. The plan was to run with the herds in the 35+ Cat 4 plus hit the course again with the Single Speeds. In order to be able to be go out and play with those who know not how to shift, I needed to transform the commuter bike (AKA Machete Betty) into something race legal. That first meant a rear brake. I slapped on a canti brake that I had lying in garage. I had pulled it off the commuter a couple years ago when one of the brake arms cracked. If figured if I rub some mud over the crack, no one would be the wiser. Second, it meant turning around the rear wheel that has a flip/flop hub on it. In the 4 years since I built this bike, I have only had it in non-fixie mode for the one time I tried CX practice before I built up the Kona. Needless to say, the single-speed side of the rear wheel was a bit rusty.

Machete Betty is built t around a steel Surly Karate Monkey frame. It pretty much every decision point in the building process, I sacrificed weight for ability to withstand punishment. The bike tips the scales at well north of 30 lbs.

After getting the brakes on and things setup up in the single speed mode, I thought the bike needed some flair. So, I bolted on a plastic cow squeaker horn to the retro 80’s Scott AT-4 bars and suck some stripper cards I hauled back from LasVegas last Interbike in the spokes. Perfect!

The Alpha CX course was out East of Denver…… just before the flat part of the earth. Adam had kept us up to date on the progress of the course. But, as I drove up and parked, I immediately figured out that there was something he did not tell us about….. a hill. Not just a little hill, no this was a huge-ass Clydesdale crushing hill. I looked at that hill, then in the back of the truck at Machete Betty and knew immediately that I was going to want to swap out that rear gear to something a wee tad bigger.

The 35+ 4’s is its typical hugeness. John Haley wins it. He is coming on some fine form as of late. If he could have timed it a month later, he would be tough to beat at States. That win put him over the top points wise and he gets to go run with the 45+ crowd.

At the start of the SS, the FMVC crew is 4 wide with Rich, Dash, Cap’n Slow and I at the back when the whistle blows. By lap number two, Kevin is standing along side the course in regular pants and his FMVC jersey cheering us on. I go by, see Kevin, and think “WTF, there has to be some sort of story there”. Turns out, when Kevin did the quicky conversion of his regularly CX race bike to SS, he honked the chain line and it was dropping the chain every 20 meters. Now….. there is only one person on the team that is a USAC certified mechanic. See if you can guess who that is.

By lap three, I am just far enough ahead of Rich and Dash that we are well within shouting distance as we weave back and forth in a switchback section. They are encouraging me in a sailor’s vocabulary to slow down; I am mocking their weight and telling them to catch up in with equal colorful adjectives in my language. Mothers all around are trying to cover their children’s ears.

By lap four, I look back through the switchbacks and see that it is only Rich. Thinking that he has dropped Dash, I yell at him “Rich! You should never, ever leave your wingman!!!!” It turns out that he did not. Instead, Dash sprained this female genital area and DNF’ed.

Thankfully, things ended shortly thereafter. I was not sure how many more times I was going to get that 30+ lb bike up the hill.

And now for some digital celluloid.

Hi, My name is Adam..... and I build courses to crush Clydesdales.

John Haley, who races for Boulder Cycle

Sport (BCS) won his final 35+ Cat 4 on the day.

Mr. Haley also gets all the work on his bike
done at BCS. The BCS mechanics were either stoned of had a
serious back spasm when they put the non-PRO bar tape on this bike.