CX 2013 Race #3 – The 3rd Course of Action

My bike looked like this after the race last weekend, which was hosted in Portage at the Manitobah Park and it featured a mud pit (which was actually a dip, or drainage ditch of some sort, flooded with water from a tank on a three-ton truck, which sat beside the pit so that more water could be added, should riding it become too easy.

During the first two practice laps, I rode around the pit thinking, what’s the point in mudding it up before the race. But as much as that seemed like a good plan, I could also see the merit in riding it at least once, which I did. Better to get over the shock of hitting the mud hard and spraying your bike and yourself with that thick Manitoba wet-clay "goodness" before the first racing lap, than during it. 

In the parking lot before the race there was debate amongst some of us as to whether such an artificially created mud obstacle was cool or not. Some suggested that if the mud isn’t naturally occurring, it’s not cool, or not in the spirit of the sport, to put it there. Others assume that since the whole course is artificially put together, to force us to ride over many things (tree roots on a straightaway to break your kidneys and your arms, barriers up a hill to force you to run up, taped lanes to force you to turn in awkward directions while climbing the other side of the hill, and so on) that we would usually avoid, what's wrong with enhancing the whole experience. From this point of view, really, creating a race course on and around a grassy public park is an exercise in making shit up, so why is adding water to one spot on the course outside the spirit of the thing? 

Which, ultimately, raises an organizational question. Since we're past the halcyon days of this (most pure) sort of cross racing and course "setting up" and we're into the regulated world of waivers and insurance and liability, how do the course designers know what's reasonably and "safely" (Whatever that means?) ride/run-able? Of course, I don't have to ride the course if I think it's unreasonable. And of course if I do start racing, I'm saying that I accept the battlefield as fair enough, then I'm in for it all the way to my surrender, or to victory (which, in this case, for me, is completion). It is, once again, a question of fairplay and sportsmanship. Traditionalists would say, let's work with what's given - if it's flowy and fast, then it's flowy and fast - if it's rainy and muddy, then it's hell. So be it. You take the good times with the bad. 

Right now, the weather forecast suggests that we'll have rain for CX #4, Mennocross. If that's the case you won't be able to blame the course designers for artificial obstacles, or mud, or slick grass, and no one will save you when you fall on the field of battle. It'll be ridiculous, and it won't matter who you are, or how well you ride. Still, there'll be a course, and there'll be a race, and I'll be riding it.