Horses for courses

Well, I did it. Ordered that 36T chainring and let it sit on the bench for a few days, nervous I'd made the wrong choice, in spite of the maths. But Monday I put it on and also mounted up a brand new rear tire, and...

It's hideous.

The 40 was never a big ring, but it looked "right" on a gravel bike. The 36, with that big 10-44 cassette out back, looks like it can't decide if it wants to be a mullet or a wayward mountain bike.

That bar tape I put on the top tube--initially as a joke, but left on when I realized how horrible shouldering that skinny tube was in CX races--doesn't win any style points, either. Nor does the pannier mounting brick on the seatpost. This bike has become a mockery of itself, and...

It's perfect.

I was worried I'd have to take a couple of chain links out, but while the derailleur folds up almost to its limit, the chain is taut in the 10. Biggest surprise of the change was having to adjust the B-screw. I don't think I'd ever had to do that for any previous chainring changes, but it absolutely would not get up onto the 44 until I made a couple of full rotations.

And the ride feels exactly the same, except now I can easily spin up some climbs at Pocahontas that used to have me grunting a little. Nothing that quite replicates the savagery of the Kitten Crusher I'll face next weekend, but sufficient to get my hardened teenage son to notice how high my cadence was while he was grinding away.

For giggles, I dug up the AXS report from 2024's MonsterCross to compare gear usage to Dirty Kitten. In that 3-hour race, I spend only a few seconds in the bail-out 44T cog, and only half a minute in the "big dog" 10T. The 40T chainring remains, in my mind, the ideal solution for that event. So this change becomes a "horses for courses" event-to-event change based on elevation profiles.

For the rear tire I stuck with the tried & tested WTB Resolute in 700x42. On the cheap-but-indestructible Sun Duroc G30 wheels, it sets up wider than a 44, and fresh rubber should help keep power delivered to the ground at the steepest parts of the climbs and when my son attacks me in the final sprint.