I’m signed up for my first 200km brevet and wanted to get a good long training ride in beforehand. I also wanted to check out part of the route, specifically some climbing portions down near Moorpark and Camarillo that I was unfamiliar with.
This ended up being a nice ride, 121mi in 9hrs 5min. It was my first century-length ride with the Cross-Check and it was great having the wider tires and saddlebag for food and raincoat storage.
Some notes: as an experiment, I wore Vans and used clips & straps instead of my normal Sidi / Speedplay clipless setup and I’m not sure if that was a good call. I was pretty tired when I got back and have some knee pain in the right knee that I’ve never really had previously. Also felt some incipient cramping coming in the right hamstring, also something I’ve never had before. Think I’ll switch back to the clipless for next week’s ride and see if there’s a difference.
Otherwise I was satisfied with the Cross-Check’s performance and especially the performance of the Grand Bois Cypres tires. My speed was in line with what I’ve done on my LeMond road bike and the comfort level was much better.
I did develop a slow leak in the back tire, but I was able to get home without having to do more than put some more air in it. On my LeMond with 700×25 tires I probably would’ve had a true puncture, so I see this as improvement. Plus it’s much easier to pump a 32mm wide tire up to pressure (around 75psi) than a 25mm wide tire using my Topeak Road Morph. I’ll take it, especially considering the amount of crap in the road along the 118 and Saticoy (aka “Shitticoy” atmo).
All in all a good ride, I’ll take it!