First Race (North SeaTac)

On my first race, I had a great starting position and was actually the first rider to the single track. Being new to cross, I looked at my tires, they said 80 - 100 psi, so I pumped them right up to 100, and went.. Well at the first bump I was thrown from the bike like a PBR cowboy, pro bull rider. After the crashed I lost a few places and a ton of momentum. By the end of the race I ended up placing 18th, not too bad for a first race.

Science Section:
Back when I was taking a physics course at the University of Washington ( ~6 years ago), I remember seeing a brief discussion of the physics of a bicycle wheel in motion in, Halliday, Resnick. When a wheel spins in the air, no friction, all parts of the wheel move at the same speed. But what’s really cool about wheels, is that even though the rim is totally connected when the wheel is rolling over a surface with friction the bottom part of the wheel will go slower then the top. This is not so intuitive. In the picture above notice how the spokes on the bottom of the wheel are in focus, and those at the top of the wheel aren't. You can also see how the linear speed of the spokes changes as its distance from the hub increase.