Today's title could refer to a WHOLE lot of stuff in my windshield right now, but specifically I'm referring to jinxing myself and my experience with road tubeless.
For whatever reason, I flat a lot. This year, I flatted at Iron Hill (MTB race - tubeless - huge rock), and had a catastrophic triple flat at Green Mountain (road - tubed - huge pothole and flat wheel from wheel truck) which helped me lose 22' on the stage. Yow. Notably, the pothole was big enough that another guy hit its twin and pinch flatted a road tubeless tire. Yup. That was just the tally from races this year. There was a streak of about a month where it seemed like I was flaying ever other ride.
In September I changed my primary (as in 99% of the time) road wheels to tubeless and I haven't had a flat since. The ride is good, which isn't surprising since I often find myself down around 65 psi on them. I don't feel like the tires I'm using (Hutchinson Fusion 3) are very fast, they feel kind of sticky compared to Conti 4000s, but since GMSR was my last road race of the year I don't care. I'll need to re-up the tubeless goo (Stan's with copious amounts of glitter) soon, but that's a 2 second op with the little syringe thing.
Cross season inadvertently ended at Schooley. Thought I'd finish out the year but I didn't. Pretty much everything in my life is up in the air right now so it was hard to get focused on racing, and racing cross when you're not focused and into it isn't for me. See also, stuff that's up in the air, I have no idea what's in store next year. Decisions I'm making in the next coupe of weeks will set the stage for that, but bike racing is the tail of the dog there. I'll get to do what I get to do.
Peace and love.
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