The Netherlands’ Tijmen Eising rode away from the field after only a few hundred meters to win the junior world championship, and Germany’s Philipp Walsleben won the espoirs in similar dominating fashion. My full reports at CX Magazine are linked above. Stay tuned for more…

This is just a quick note to remind regular readers that Cyclocross Worlds start tomorrow. I’ll be there helping cover the races for Cyclocross Magazine. There will be live updates, photos, and race reports, and the coverage should be great. By all accounts the CX Mag team is the largest accredited media team at the event, with additional help coming from back in the States. Don’t forget to check in for the coverage, especially a live chat with Tim Johnson right after the elite men race on Sunday.

I’ll try to get updates on this blog here as well, but head for CX Mag’s coverage for the most up-to-date news. Stay tuned for more!

I happen to have a set of Mavic’s R-Sys wheels. They’re fine wheels, I suppose, very light, if not particularly aerodynamic. I didn’t pick them for myself, they came on my SuperSix when I bought it last year, so I gave them a try. Well, it turns out the front wheels have a tendency to blow apart without warning. Which, as you can imagine, is pretty much catastrophic for the rider.

So the wheels have been recalled by Mavic. The terms of the deal are pretty good, you’re supposed to get a set of their Aksium wheels to use (and keep) while you wait for them to deliver a replacement for the wheel that’s subject to sudden failure.

Here’s the catch: despite what Mavic says on their website, you call a shop here in Belgium and they tell you that you must take the wheels to the dealer where you bought them. If that dealer happens to be in the US (and you happen to be in Belgium) you can plead your case with them, and they’ll tell you that you need to produce an original bill of sale and then they’ll try to maybe contact Mavic and see if they want to do something for you. If your bill of sale is, say, in storage on the other side of the Atlantic, well, too bad for you.

So you can call Mavic directly, check and see if there’s another dealer in the area who wants to help you. Except that the the only dealer they list in Belgium is the regional distributor, located in Dessel, a nice three hour train trip from Brussels. If you explain this to the person who takes your call at Mavic, you learn that the call center is in India, that they know nothing more about the recall than you do, and can’t help you. They’ll take your number, tell you someone from Mavic will call you back. Which, of course, nobody ever does.

So there you are, stuck with a $1500 set of wheels that you can’t use and that nobody will help you exchange.

What’s my point?

Basically, I’ve come to the conclusion that Mavic is a company that makes inferior products and doesn’t care about their safety or customer service. You have a problem with a Neuvation wheel, you call them up, you get John Neugent himself on the phone, and he takes care of the problem. You have a problem with your Zipps or American Classics and there’s a customer service number right there on the front page of their websites. Just try to find a Mavic customer service number. Seriously, I challenge you: try to find a direct number for Mavic on their website. You won’t be able to do it.

So, long story short, I’m done with them. There are too many high quality wheels out there, made by companies that actually care about their customers, to waste time on Mavic’s nonsense anymore. I’ll be doing my shopping elsewhere from now on, and, if you know what’s good for you, you will too. Buh-bye, Mavic!

So apparently we had some hackery kinds of problems on this site this week. I remain uncertain about exactly what happened, but I think they’ve been resolved. I’ll continue to watch carefully to make sure that they are. In the meantime, sorry if you happened to catch us while we were updating the site and double sorry if you happened to see the garbage that the hacker managed to slip into a few posts on the site. Please let me know if you notice anything out of the ordinary here again.

So I’m throwing in the towel on the 2008-09 ‘cross season. It’s just become totally impossible, at the moment, to train at the level necessary to continue to compete. That’s ok, because I was pretty burned out anyway, and some time away from the bike seems to be doing me some good.

I spent the last week in Switzerland where, among other things, I talked science for four days and sledded about 10 miles and 4000 vertical feet down a mountain. (Check back for the full story on that soon, once life slows down enough for me to write it.) This week our friend Kathy is here to visit Brussels and spend some time collaborating on the beginnings of a paper on some of our common research. Then Sunday night it’s off to Dublin for more meetings, and then back here for a couple of days of work.

All this leads up the the actually exciting news: I’m officially accredited press for the 2009 Cyclocross World Championships. Thanks to my friends at Cyclocross Magazine, for whom I’ll be doing some post-race reporting. I’ll have plenty of news posted here as well, so check in for updates from the biggest race of the year, Jan 31 and Feb 1.

My article about amateur racing in Belgium has also hit newsstands in the aforementioned CX Magazine, so keep an eye out for that as well. Racing may be over for me for now, but there’s plenty more action coming up to entertain you. Stay tuned!