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| Start of the B Masters' Nittany Lion Cross |
Cyclocross or 'cross' for those in the know, is a type of bike racing held in the autumn and winter comprising a few laps of a short (roughly 2 mile) course over pavement, wooded trails, grass, hills and obstacles forcing the cyclist to dismount, carry the bike and then remount.
There a few different stories about how cyclocross racing came about, my favourite describes the origin of the sport around 1900 when European road racers would race from one town to another. They were allowed to cut through farmer's fields, over fences or take any other shortcuts in order to make it to the next town first. These races allowed for off-season training and the difficult conditions increased the intensity at which the cyclists were riding and improved their on-the-road bike handling abilities. Forced running sections, were incorporated to help deliver warm blood to the feet and toes, as well as exercise other groups of muscles.
Since then, the sport has taken on a huge following in Europe and more recently in the US where, according to USA Cycling, it is the fastest growing competitive form of cycling. Apparently Lance Armstrong contributed to this surge after his inadvertent cyclocross display to avoid the terrible crash of the unfortunate Joseba Beloki in the 2003 Tour de France.
(It's nice to see that even a pro like Lance sometimes does the double jump to get on his bike.)
It turns out that it takes quite a bit of getting used to this sport. Dismounting and mounting at full gallop without looking like a clown is one thing in practice, doing it when you're completely cooked at the end of a race is quite another. I read somewhere that there are about 100 things that you can get wrong in a cyclocross race, if you manage to get 50 right, it's a great race.
The conditions were perfect for the B Masters 35+ race. Cool, dry and sunny with a fast course with little technical difficulties was a very good introduction for me. I didn't get a great start but started overtaking people pretty quickly and by the end of the 2nd lap thought that I'd gone out a bit too hard and was in danger of blowing up. As I'd been warned by many, this type of racing has you at full gas the whole time.
There were plenty of crashes on the slippery turns that seemed to get worse on each lap. In comparison to road racing, crashes are much more forgiving here as you're falling from a lower speed on grass, sand or mud rather than at 40 km/h onto the tarmac. I managed to avoid a couple of crashes by dismounting and running around them.
I was glad to have taken some sage advice and invested in some very good tubular tires (sic). These allow you to run a much lower pressure and so bounce less and keep better traction. I was also surprised as to how hard it was riding on the "flat" grassy sections. These actually aren't flat at all, it's like riding over corrugated iron with padding. No doubt without the tubulars, my bones would have been shaken a lot more than they were.
I'd been blocked behind a rider for at least a lap leading into the final barriers and I managed to pass him before having a good dismount, run and remount. My fellow rider and occasional training partner, Chris, was a few yards ahead and I worked hard to keep up with him and we pulled ahead of the other 3 that had been more or less together for the last 5 minutes. With the finish just ahead, I knew that I didn't have to worry about blowing up and so decided to make a go of getting past Chris as we entered the finishing straight. We both sprinted flat out and crossed the line close enough to warrant the announcer to call it as a photo finish. I don't know what the final result was but I was very pleased with my effort. I came somewhere in the 30s out of the field of around 80.
A fantastic day and I'm looking forward to the next one. Apparently, that one was as easy as it gets ...
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Update: Bad news was that I only placed 42, good news was that I nosed Chris in the sprint!
