Cyclocross begins

Yesterday I spent 3.5 hrs driving to and from my first cyclocross race, the Nittany Lion Cross, in Trexlertown, PA.  3.5hrs driving to suffer intensely for 40 minutes.  Doesn't make a lot of sense but I had as much fun as I've ever had in a bike race.  I'm hooked.

Start of the B Masters' Nittany Lion Cross

After a few weeks of learning to ride off-road with plenty of encouragement from my team-mates, I got hold of a cyclocross bike and started learning how to ride it.  Part of this learning experience revitalized my wheel truing skills after hitting my rear wheel on a log at high speed on a training ride but I digress. 

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!

The Rockpile 2010

For the 3rd year in a row, I rode in the auto road bicycle race up Mt Washington on Sat Aug 21. Following a disappointing race up Mt Whiteface in June I had trained hard and had reached my lowest weight in 25 years in an attempt to improve on my performance of the last two years. In the week leading up to the race, I felt prepared and relaxed and on numerous occasions when asked if I was nervous about the race I responded, "no, it's just a bike ride up a hill" or "I'm well prepared" or similar. Indeed I didn't feel anxious at all until Friday afternoon when I arrived at registration at the foot of the hill to meet my team mate fellow-sufferers. From the toll house at the base, the clear weather gave an uninterrupted view to the peak. I started remembering what it was like to go up that road and for the next 18 hours I was a nervous wreck.

Like last year, a cloudless sky faced the 600 or so cyclists to be launched in 5 waves up the 7.6 mile 4600' climb. A good turnout of top notch riders were sent off by cannon fire at 8.35am followed by the seniors, vets and then the rest of which I was a part. I managed to get close to the start line and selected my smallest rear cog (12T) for the only 50 yards or so that it would see use during the race. The gun went off and we hurtled along the tiny flat section before the cacophony of gear changes under full strain began. I was determined to start very slowly this year, for the first mile I wanted to keep well below the 280W or so that I thought I could average for the race and in spite of feeling as though I was falling backwards through the group, my power was close to 300W. I knew that I'd see many of those passing me in about 15 minutes or so gasping like landed fish so I kept trying to calm down and on we rode.

The group started stringing out very quickly and by mile 2 I started picking up the pace and tried to find the little shade that there was on the sides of the road as by now we were all pretty warm in this the most sheltered part of the course. As expected, the early adrenaline soaking had blown up many a rider's reserves and I started passing riders from earlier groups at this point.

I was expecting to go through a mentally low point around mile 4 as I had before but it didn't come and instead we reached the treeline with the glorious view of the valley it affords. There's not a lot of time to enjoy the view but on seeing how far down the start was, I had the first feeling of real accomplishment as to how much work I'd done. Shortly after mile 4 begins the steep long dirt section that lasts almost a mile. It's tough rounding the corner to see a long line of riders in pain stretching up into the sky but on we went, marking off minor victories one at a time like the next rock, catch the rider in the red shirt and so on.

My low point came at the end of the dirt section at Cragway turn where you turn and on a clear day get the first view of the summit since being at the bottom. It's still a hell of a long way up at that point and it's easy for your mind to start slowing you down. Quite a few training rides for this race were done with Doug on Sandy Hook where we'd do 3 loops at full effort. The 3rd loop for me was always mentally tough and I have mapped out in my mind the achievable milestones that give me something to aim for; the gatehouse, the missiles, the turn, the batteries and so on. Knowing that I was about that far in terms of hurt and effort left to go, I did the same thing at that point, imagining the rest of the climb as part of the Sandy Hook training ride. The gatehouse is at that corner and on I ground.

On reaching the 6 mile marker I knew that this was going to be a good result for me. My power readings had held up and I was feeling OK (relatively this means very good). I had a short panting conversation with a rider from Chicago who was recovering from cramps. I realized that it wasn't that far before the road flattened out and I encouraged him on and in so doing decided that it was time to burn my remaining reserves. I took one last sip of drink, drained the rest onto the road and imagined that I was nearing the gatehouse on the last lap of a Sandy Hook threshold sufferfest.

It's hard to describe what it's like at the end of this race for those haven't done it before. There's a lot of people yelling, crowds on either side of the road and really motivates you to give everything you have (and a bit more). Before I knew it I was at the foot of the final wall and remembered to ride almost into the crowd on the left before driving as hard as possible up the ramp to cross the line in 1:22:33 - my best time and almost 6 mins faster than my previous record. As happens to most at the top, I could barely breathe let alone see, but after a couple of mins wrapped in the finisher's blanket and adorned with the medal, the pain had gone.

Doug had a very difficult ride and cramped repeatedly as did Art. Darren rode well and it was good to see all at the summit.

This was undoubtedly the best race I've had from the view of improvement, preparation and execution. I was happy with my result but not quite as happy as I should have been.

The first year I did this race, my time was 1:28:00. Last year I was better prepared and managed 1:27:59 and suffered on the hottest race day ever. My target this year was 1:24, still some way away from one of my major cycling goals (in fact my toughest goal) of doing Mt Washington in under 1:20 but I'm old enough to know what is realistic to achieve in the time that I had and so a 4 min improvement to me seemed like a good goal.

Had I done 1:23:50 something, I would have been ecstatic. But my time was just a bit too close to where I ultimately wanted to achieve. This feeling is the closest that I've experienced of what's called the "uncanny valley".

The uncanny valley is a hypothesis developed in the 70s as a description of a response in humans observers when robots (or nowadays other human likenesses such as those developed in animated films) look or act almost but not quite like humans. The idea is that as an image of a human improves say from 50% to 90%, observers like the improvement, they react more warmly to the facsimilie. This reaction continues as the likeness improves further, say at 95%, people like the humanoid even more. But at some point, say 96%, there's suddenly a sharp drop off in how people react - they revolt against the image. This fall in the graph of response over likeness is called the uncanny valley.

Anyway without going into the existential, religious or evolutionary theories as to why we behave like this, as far as my Mt Washington result was concerned, I just got a bit too close to my ultimate goal to avoid asking questions like, could I have gone faster, trained a little bit harder, lost a few more lb and so on.

Fortunately, these concerns were washed away quickly in the merriment of the great evening party that followed but I started thinking that in spite of what I'd said about not doing it again next year, maybe 2011 will be the year ...

For those so inclined, I've included an image of my ride performance as recorded by my PowerTap.