Tech FAQ gallery: Lennard’s ’cross setup, in great detail

After years of testing on road hill climbs, I’m convinced that my 38-inch (965mm) long legs get significantly more power out of my 205mm crank arms than out of 180mm or shorter arms. So putting 205s on is a weight trade-off I happily make.

I have raised the bottom bracket accordingly, making pedal clearance with the ground, as well as the height of my center of gravity, the same as with a standard cyclocross bike with 175mm cranks. I powder-coated them to match my bike.

The chainring is a 40-tooth Rotor – the smallest you can get for a 130mm BCD (bolt circle diameter) crankset – surrounded by carbon FSA chain guards. I overhaul the SRAM GXP bottom brackets on both bikes at least once a month. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

My riding position, gearing, and 205mm crank length is identical on both of my cyclocross bikes. The magnesium tubing is super light (two-thirds the density of aluminum) and very strong. It allows the use of a tall down tube that rests comfortably against the hip and a big, round top tube that sits nicely on the shoulder, all while adding stiffness with low weight. And the vibration damping of magnesium on a bumpy cyclocross course is a joy to experience. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

While I’d of course love to make it lighter yet, 17.06 pounds (7.74 kg) seems like a pretty good weight for a dependable bike that fits my 6-foot-6-inch frame perfectly. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

My white bike (my “pit bike”) weighs 17.83 pounds (8.09 kg). I unfortunately have some superstition about it, as I so far this season have always placed one place lower on it. In every Colorado race this season in which I’ve ridden the white bike, I’ve finished in second place, whereas I’ve won every Colorado race that I’ve ridden on my red bike.

The trend continues out of state. In the USGP races in Louisville, Kentucky, I got a third on my red bike and a fourth on my white bike. They’re both such sweet bikes, I hate that I defer to my red bike when I want to maximize my results. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

With 205mm cranks and dependable components, 17.83 lbs. is nothing to sneeze at for my big white bike. The weight difference is due to seven to 10 items on the bike weighing 30-50g more than on the red bike: pedals, welded clearance plate on frame, rear brake, tires, seatpost, fork-mounted brake cable hanger, steel derailleur cable housing. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

Ruckus Components in Portland, Oregon, did this sweet modification to my ENVE fork on my white bike. The brake shudder had been highly unpleasant before with this fork when using cantilever brakes with a cable hanger above the headset and a 325mm steering tube.

To eliminate the fork chatter, I had used a mini V-brake on this fork last season, but the pad clearance to the rims was so close that mud clogging and even pad drag was an issue. The V-brake’s power with Campy levers was too high for my tastes, even with the cable length backed way off so that the brake engaged only when the lever was pulled back to the bar. So I asked Ruckus to carbon-wrap a cable hanger to my fork crown so I could use a cantilever brake without having to drill a hole in the crown for the hanger.

It works like a charm. Perfect braking, and it looks great. Ruckus even clear-coated the entire fork, and I prefer the gloss finish to the matte finish the fork had before. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

The way the brake pads are set back between the deep, thin legs of the Alpha Q fork on my red bike, there is almost no way to get at the pad-retaining bolts, which on this Avid Shorty Ultimate brake come in from the top of the pad holder. The fork legs also prevent access to the screws with pad holders with side-mounted retaining screws.

So, given that I switch pads a lot for different rims, I made little pad-retaining wire clips. I tried it for most of the season without pad-retaining screws at all, but the pads came out a number of times when I’d apply the brakes when stopped and unconsciously roll the bike backward. When a pad fell out on the start line of a race, I’d had enough, and I made these retaining clips. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

For cleaner cable routing to my front brake and the ability to run my stem all the way down against the headset top cap, I hang a Salsa cable hanger off of one of my stem front cap bolts, rather than a cable hanger sandwiched between the stem and headset. That Salsa hanger is meant to dangle off of the seat binder, and I filed away the interlock teeth on the front cap and stem body at that bolt to make room for it. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

Here is how the Salsa cable hanger attaches to my stem. There used to be an interlocking mechanism at this bolt just like the one visible in the background at the other bolt; I filed it off. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

Besides the great shifting, light weight, nice lever shape, and good looks, there is a great reason to use Campy shifters for cyclocross, namely the quick-release button on the lever. This makes opening cantilever brakes far easier. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

When the quick-release button is pushed back into place, the lever looks like this and is ready for use. But if you accidentally leave it in the open position, you can still brake just fine with it. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

As far as I’m concerned, Campy levers are a must with FSA K-Force carbon cantilever brakes. To open the K-Force brake caliper, you have to pull the cable head out of its notch in the right arm, but there is no additional knob to grab other than the end of the cable.

Without releasing the cable already with the quick-release button on the Campy lever, it is almost impossible to pull the cable head out without completely readjusting the brake by turning the cable barrel adjuster all of the way in to allow enough slack to extract the cable head.

The brake does work great, and you can adjust it like an Avid Shorty Ultimate from narrow stance to wide stance (from high power to high clearance). It weighs about 27g more than a Shorty Ultimate or about 35g more than a TRP EuroX Magnesium. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

My white bike has an old-style Campy Veloce rear derailleur lightened up by 8g or so with a Tiso red-anodized aluminum mounting bolt. Because of their vulnerability in cyclocross, I run the least expensive Campy rear derailleurs I can buy. The weight is close to double that of Super Record or Record carbon rear derailleurs, but they are more robust, at a small fraction of the cost. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

On my red bike, I run a new-style Campy Centaur rear derailleur lightened up by 8g or so with a titanium mounting bolt salvaged off of an old, broken Record rear derailleur. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

These Tiso jockey wheels have full ceramic bearings (races and balls) without any cover or seal over them. They spin like mad (they had by far the lowest friction in a test we ran at the VeloLab), and you never have to lubricate them. Water and junk gets in them, but the ceramic is so hard it just grinds up the grit and keeps spinning super freely. That superlight KMC 10-speed chain with cutout inner and outer plates and hollow pins shifts great and lasts a long time. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

I have an easy-to-turn black, inline barrel adjuster on my rear derailleur cable so that I can fine-tune it while riding (and even while racing). I have a barrel adjuster at the cable stop for the rear brake cable to allow adjustment to a wider range of rim widths and pad wear than the barrel adjuster on the brake caliper allows. To save 40g, I use white Kevlar Gore housing for the rear derailleur. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

My white bike has the same cable barrel adjusters but not the lighter Kevlar derailleur housing. I still use Gore fully-sheathed cable housings on all three cables on both bikes to protect the cables — and my shifting performance — from gunk and power washers. Those are aluminum Tiso bolts clamping my stem to the steerer to save a ridiculously small number of grams. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

Here’s the design of both of my cyclocross bikes. To accommodate the 205mm cranks, I have raised the bottom bracket accordingly (it’s 30mm higher than the standard height of many cyclocross bikes. I have also made the seat angle correspondingly steeper to ensure proper saddle position with a zero-setback seatpost and the longer crank.

The longer crank and the sloping top tube meet at a lower point on the head tube, allowing me to make the frame stiffer and lighter by using shorter tubes for the seat tube, top tube, and down tube while maintaining the proper relative positions of my butt, feet, and hands. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

To make it super light, I removed the shift paddle and completely de-gutted my left Record lever on my red bike. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

I could remove the shift paddle and de-gut the Centaur left lever on my white bike as well, but the thumb lever is integrated into the body of a Campy QS shifter, so the thumb lever and its internal mechanism stayed behind. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

I cut three bands of heat-shrink tubing, stack them up on either end of my pedals, and heat them with a blow dryer to get them to shrink onto the pedal. This, along with replacing my shoe treads frequently, prevents my shoe from rocking on the pedal. This is a super-light Crank Brothers Eggbeater 4Ti pedal. I overhaul the pedals on both bikes every couple of months in dry conditions, and more frequently in wet conditions. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

I use Vincero Designs magnetic water bottle holders and magnetic bottles on the seat tubes of both of my ’cross bikes. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

The Vincero magnetic bottle holds on great, yet flexes to the side if I bump it when shouldering the bike. In this warm winter, I’ve loved having a bottle on my bike and taking a sip every lap. It’s easy to get back onto the holder, too; all you have to do is throw the bottle in the general direction of the holder, and the magnets do the rest. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

I run SRAM Red ceramic bearings on my red bike, partly for the low friction, and partly in response to the rapid replacement rate I had with the standard SRAM GXP bottom brackets, despite my regime of frequent overhaul. After every race in the mud followed by bike washing, the bearings on the non-drive side were shot with the standard SRAM GXP bottom brackets. I have yet to use the ceramic bottom bracket in the wet, but I’m hoping it will survive it.

Yes, my crankarms are mismatched in color; the left one is an experiment with a new matte anodization we’re trying on our “Zinntegrated” cranks. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

I run 205mm Zinntegrated cranks on my white bike as well. The pedals are full-steel Eggbeaters, and I’ve replaced the steel spindles with extra-long titanium ones, as well as put three layers of heat-shrink tubing on either end to eliminate shoe rocking. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

This Ritchey WCS carbon straight post is very light (341g), and it had the highest bump deflection of any seatpost in our VeloLab seatpost test last spring. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

The Thompson Masterpiece seatpost on my white bike is lightweight, strong, and easy to adjust. It is 38g heavier than the Ritchey carbon post on my red bike and 40g lighter than a standard Thompson straight post. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

Yes, I have these Easton EC90 SLX3 carbon bars (46cm center-to-center) on both of my ’cross bikes. I have broken one on each bike in almost two seasons of use, one in a bike crash and one when falling off a bike stand. On both bikes, I run Tiso red-anodized aluminum top cap bolts and stem clamp bolts at the steerer (but not at the handlebar). Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

On my white bike, I run the 40-tooth Rotor chainring on the outer chainring position and space the outer chainguard out from there. I have a deep cutout for chainstay clearance, with a reinforcing plate welded on over it. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

My red bike has no chainstay clearance cutout, so I pressed a triple spindle into the crankarm to space it out 5mm, and I run the 40-tooth Rotor chainring in the inner chainring position and space the inner chainguard off of it. To even out the stance width on both bikes with this increase in bottom bracket width to the drive side, I use short pedal spindles on the red bike with a spacer on the left pedal spindle, and 5mm longer spindles on the white bike. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

The Fizik Antares saddle fits my butt well and is very easy to slide on and off of during dismounts and remounts. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

The Antares has a plastic receptacle in back for various clip-in options. Yes, I record the weight of every item on my bikes. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

A taillight and a seat bag are options that clip into the receptacle on the back of the Antares saddle. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

The taillight clips in… Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

Or the seat bag clips in. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

We use replaceable dropouts on both sides of our magnesium frames, after my old college housemate had to replace his entire magnesium Pinarello Dogma frame when it dropped from his garage rafters without wheels in it. It landed on the left dropout and snapped it. No dropout replacement was possible. I use Tiso red-anodized aluminum bolts to hold the dropouts on, saving a few grams over the steel bolts. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

The replaceable dropout fits into a curved receptacle in the frame. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

Our replaceable dropouts allow me to run a disc brake if I want to stick this dropout on and zip-tie the brake wire or hose down. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

Dual replaceable dropouts allow switching to track dropouts to make it into a single-speed. I used to make this change frequently a couple of years ago in cyclocross. I had a travel-bike cable splitter on the rear derailleur cable, so I could pull off the right dropout, along with the rear derailleur, most of the cable, and two of its three housing sections. The singlespeeders were so fast that I lost interest in this fairly quickly. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

I started racing in Sidi shoes back in 1979. They fit my feet well, but the size keeps going up as I age. My first leather ones with titanium soles in 1979 were size 44. Over time, I went to size 45 and 46, but my feet had grown or spread out enough that by two seasons ago, even that was not enough.

I got the blue Dragon 2 shoes in size 46.5, which worked great, and then I bought the red Dragon 2s in size 47 so that I could wear two pairs of thick socks inside on cold days and because their color matched my bike. I run toe spikes on that pair.

The black orthotics are superlight (36 grams/pair) custom Cycle Soles by Scott Peterson and work great. The red orthotics are much heavier (165 g/pair) and also save me from my Morton’s Neuroma problems; I had them made for my classic ski boots by Bob Egeland of Neptune Mountaineering in Boulder, Colorado, as my neuroma issue is greatest when skiing classic technique. The red shoes with orthotics weigh almost 200g more (1145g vs. 952g) than the blue shoes with their orthotics.

I have won races this season on both and thus have no superstition about needing a certain pair. I replace the tread frequently on both pairs to keep my feet from rocking on the pedals as they wear down from running in them. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

To quiet ticking valve stems, I tape them down. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

Here’s another ticking valve stem quieted with tape. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

I treated myself to these 352g, 33mm Dugast Typhoons for nationals last season. When coupled with these wheels built with ENVE 1.25 (“Classic 25mm”) 250g tubular rims laced with 24 spokes (front) and 28 spokes (rear) to DT Swiss 240 hubs, they are incredibly light — 2100g/pair with cogset and skewers (the wheels alone are 1105g/pair). They have been on my bike for every race I’ve won this year; I had better use a different set to avoid having a superstition about them, too. I overhaul the hubs and freehubs on all of my wheels at least once a season. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com

These are the spare parts I bring to faraway races. I’ve never broken a carbon seatpost, but I’ve seen others do it in cyclocross, so I have a complete post and saddle setup ready to go in if that happens. I no longer use carbon seat rails in cross, having broken one in training on the nationals course the day before my race this past January; but people also break standard rails, so having an extra saddle and post is extra security in the event of a broken saddle.

I design my own bikes so that in my ideal riding position, the saddle is clamped in the center of the rails to reduce the chances of rail breakage. I’ve broken seat binders in my day, so I bring one. I’ve broken carbon bars, so I bring one just in case, along with bar tape. I’ve broken plenty of rear derailleurs over the years, so I bring a spare, and I bring both dropouts in case one gets bent or broken. Photo: Lennard Zinn | VeloNews.com