Well effin aye. My first race of the SoCalCross season did not go well. On the 2nd lap of the race just beyond the 1st turn of the course my cassette disintegrated. A completely rare event. I was feeling good and within sight of the leaders. I would have put myself somewhere in the top 15. I was just getting ready to sprint towards the barrier when I felt my rear derailleur go into the spokes….yeah, not good. I immediately shifted out of the gear I was in and tried to find a place for the chain to ride that didn’t make crunchy grindy noises…unfortunately there was nothing that would resolve the crunchy grindy noise. With much dismay I stopped and tried to straighten the derailleur…there goes two racers past me…I got back on and tried to go as fast as possible. At this point I was a long way from the pit area so I had to just tough it out and make due with what I had which was a non-engaging derailleur. Once I got to the pit area and switched to my mtb many racers had past me. Feeling pissed and frustrated I just put my head down and started cranking. I got past at least 6 guys and then was passed by my friend Tak on the last lap. Once again this guy caught me at the end of the race. Last season he did this to me several times. Once I recovered from the hill climb I shifted up a gear and passed him back didn’t look back. I held onto 26th out of 36. You do not know how frustrating it was to be feeling good and having a good race and then it all fell apart. After the race a fellow competitor said he may have rear-ended me on lap 2 and caused the destruction. I am doubting his tale since I got the real story once I was home and able to inspect the damage closely. When I got home I took the rear wheel off and easily removed the lock ring from the cassette. Not good. The lockring had ripped a couple threads off of itself when it was forcibly removed against it’s will from the freehub body. To make matters worse the pin that holds all 9 SRAM cogs together had backed out and resulted in the largest cog getting incredibly bent into its neighbor. Blah! When the wheel rotated the lockring hit the drop out and the entire unit looked like a weeble wobble. Grrr. I took it all apart and put it back together again. I had to straighten the mega-bent cog in a vise to get it straight enough to reassemble.
Final tally: derailleur is fubar, cassette cannot be trusted at this point but I will use it for a spare, derailleur hanger needs tuning, and the rear wheel needs a trip to the truing stand.
The take-away to all this: be even more prepared. This was my first mechanical in 14 years of racing. That’s an incredible run without part failure so that takes the bite off a little bit. But still!!!! AHHHHH!!!!
Singlespeed Sunday coming up!
