Advice & Chain Retention Tips for Cyclocross Biking

Video Transcript

"MICKEY DENONCOURT: Some people, instead of using two chain rings on the front of their cyclocross bike, they use one chain ring. They do that just to simplify stuff in really rough conditions, really bad weather and stuff like that. It's hard to shift across two chain rings. So what they do is they usually run some sort of outer plate which replaces the big chain ring that sort of keeps the chain from falling off to the inside, and then either another plate on the inside or a little sort of fang piece off the seat tube of the bike that keeps that from happening. If you're running two chains, like a lot of people are, you know, it's good for faster--for courses with more changes in speed, you want to make sure that you run your chain as short as possible. The more tension that you have on your chain, the less likely it's going to be to pop off. So I'll show you as I shift into my largest gear combo on this bike, my chain really can't get much shorter. I could maybe take one or two links out of this chain. And the reason it's so good to have this short chain is just more overall tension to keep things from popping off. But if you're running a single-ring setup, which is kinda nice, it simplifies stuff. There's so much going on in a cyclocross race that having a simpler bike is nice. You want to put your chain. You want to run a medium-sized chain ring like maybe like a 42. That's your single ring. Run it on the inside, run a plate on the outside and then run something off the seat tube of your bike over here to keep the chain from jumping off on the inside. And when you do that, just make your chain absolutely as short as possible. When you're on your big, big gear combination, your derailleur should look like this. It should be almost horizontal with the ground. That's how you know that it's not going to be popping off anytime soon."