Cross 2013 begins or Who's up for a little bicycle BDSM?

Really it begins long before you wake up on the morning of the first race thinking this is the day that it starts. This is the day that I dread to love. This is the day that I will be reminded that I'm not as prepared as I think I am. This is the day that says that there's nothing much more I can do to prepare, except drink water and eat the right food at the right time. It begins long before all this and the loading of bikes onto racks, and the remembering of gear and bottles and tubes and tools and always bringing your pump. It begins long before this, the day of pressure and pleasure. It begins like it might have for my brother T yesterday, when you just happen upon someone you know and trust and care about who says that they're going to race cyclocross today, and if you want to spend time with them, well it'll have to be at the race, why don't you come along? It begins when you say, well I guess I'll try that. It begins when you enter your first open race with that motley bunch of novitiates. It's all starting to sound evangelical here, friendship evangelism in fact - the worst kind - but just because one bunch of crazies uses this tool to its nefarious ends does not mean that it can't become a force for good: Cyclocross racers don't let friends miss cyclocross races.

From a few hours east of Toronto he came for business and pleasure, and like a good old door to door evangelist, I invited him to a cyclocross holy of holies: Dark Cross. And, like a good old dupe, he came, and he rode. Now I wanted to offer a photograph of the brother T and his journeys around the dirt and grass track, but my source has not taken the time to upload any of his pictures. This source assured me that he had images of T, since he's larger than I am, and he was moving around the course at a pace that you might expect of a first-timer. Even T admitted to taking a somewhat leisurely approach, although he did manage not to get lapped by the 15 year old race leader. If you're going to be duped into anything, Dark Cross is a quality master to choose, for, like cyclocross itself, there's not much to do but give yourself to it. As for me, for the last nine weeks I've been a slave of Dark Cross in one way or another.

And for the next seven weeks I'll think about cross everyday, and for seven days of those seven weeks, it will be the only thing I can think about. It's a kind of self-flagellation, a kind of bondage, straight-up submissive sadism - a bicycle BDSM sort of situation. The process is pain and hope and anticipation and dread and ecstacy and it's only after you finish the first race, and the next one and the next one, that you remember why all of that obsession is so magical. Still you're at a loss as to how to explain why you would voluntarily, for shits and giggles as it were, do something so gruelling. The facts are that there's no way to race cyclocross without spending a significant amount of time thinking to yourself: "This hurts. I don't really have to do this. I could quit any time." But it's also true that when you finish the race you would say that you were lying to yourself when you thought those things, except for the part about it hurting. But you really do have to do it, and you couldn't quit at any time, even if you wanted to. 

Dark Cross 2013 - Wallace&Wallace run-up (an ABES photo)

I've stopped in the middle of a race once. I've fallen over unconscious. I'll call it an involuntary withdrawal. I did not choose to stop. My cyclocross soul, that part of my spirit that resides, I imagine, somewhere between my heart and my legs, did not want to stop. My brain and body just stopped working together on the project of moving themselves around the track on top of my bike, and I came to, lying on the ground beside the track. It was not a proud moment, but a noteworthy one: I learned that my cyclocross soul may require more of me than I can deliver, and it's my duty to do my best to push my body to be up to this soul's demands. 

What I'm learning from this, from racing cyclocross, is that the best things in your life, the things that are worth doing, that one best thing for your soul, will make you do it until you drop. Until you've done it good and proper. Until when you're doing it, that is all and the only thing that you're doing. When you let cyclocross into the house, it takes over completely. You're completely possessed by it. The success and the failure. The pain and the love. Sometimes people use sports as metaphors to help them understand, by object lesson, life and living: golf & baseball often get the nod. What boring shit that is though, to imagine life as being about standing around and hitting small balls. I'll gladly take the crazy-assed hard work and real risks of cyclocross, followed by a party with friends! After which you collect yourself, take a day off to recover, and start in on it all over again.