Cross 2013 Race #8 - To the riders, to make much of time

Image posted by Woodcock Cycle Works

This shot was taken  on the fourth lap of the 40 minute race at the Provincials, which was race eight, which was the last race of the season, which was held at The Forks in Winnipeg, and which will be the course (more or less) for the Canadian Nationals next year! This shot exemplifies three of the unbeatable elements of cross racing: diversity, egalitarian participation, and the ride(run)-your-ass-off-while-you-may-old-time-is-still-a-flying spirit. 

On the far left, U13 female racer, MH, is grinding away at it with the rest of us (Did I mention that she's an U13 racer!?). Next left is me, a 40+ master (oh the misnomers!), knowing there will be one more lap to go, and wishing they'd hoover up the sand we've just plowed through, so I don't have to do that again. In the middle left is LK, a senior (23 - 29 yrs) female who some of you may recognize from other significant pursuits in other cycling realms, suffering along with the rest of us. In the centre, and overtaking me is DL, who plays the wait-and-see game first, and then the go-faster-now game in the later laps - great tactic ... if you've got the lungs. On the right is DS, a 50+ MASTER (never was there a truer category bestowed) who started in the second wave 2 full minutes behind the wave the rest of us started in, and he's sending us all out of the classroom, and up to the office. And the front right (you can just see his rear wheel and right pedal) is GF, another 40+ master who LK and I have been battling back and forth with (forthwith?) the whole race. 

This is our provincial championship race and the above panoply of types of racers are on the same field of battle, at the same time! We are meeting at The Forks! The cross-road! Name another sport where that can happen! Full intensity! Full range! What I'm marvelling at here is that all 6 of us are fully, fully, fully engaged in this thing. We are making much of time. So much. Sure our results will be posted in 4 different categories, but here we 6 are, hammering hard up the same run-up, getting in each others' way (well, we were all friendly and cooperative, but it wasn't like we could just ignore each other and do our own thing), and getting things done! 

Why? Why is this awesome? Because we are all at once and at the same time in the flower of our youth when we're out there in the smiling to-day of the moment, and we are also all at once and at the same time riding in the knowledge, some of us more than others, that each of us, to-morrow will be dying.

I'll leave the rest of this cross-season eulogy to the last three stanzas of Mr. Herrick's imperative:

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he 's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he 's to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.

Cross 2013 Race #7 - Some observations

First off, a big thanks to the people who take pictures at the races, and then share them on FB or a blog (RC! and NP!). It's a great thing to have the pictures to help you relive a part of your life, even if it was a difficult (read: Holy hellish) 40 or so minutes (this race was actually 37'52" for me). Second off, the CrossTastic course was sweet fast flowy fun! Thanks for that too! Now, in a lamer, more "frame by frame" version, I will imitate the #Svenness Vimeo series to de/re-construct last week's race.

The hole shot: You only have a chance at a hole shot if you start in the front row, and if you've got the legs that day, or just have the legs period. I had one of those two going for me, but I missed my chance and the start kind of turned into an (ass)hole shot. I dropped from starting 5th, to rolling something like 12th into the first corners.

Run-ups and little barriers: If you look angry on the way up, on the first lap - if you look angry because you feel like you should be puking, on the first run-up of the first lap - it will be a long race. A long, long, long race. There is no way to fix this (GeeVs!) except to put your head down, puke if you can, and ride on because you must.

Carrying the bike: Is it more efficient (read: less tiring and/or faster) to shoulder the bike (like a classic (classy!) cross racer), or to pick it up by the top-tube and shifter (like an ungainly suitcase)? I don't know, but I think it makes a difference. I also tried the pick-it-up-by-the-top-tube-over-the-barriers-and-then-set-it-down-and-roll-it-between-the-barriers once, and that was way more work than I thought it would be. Though my personal practice is not consistent, I'd bet that the classy-cross-carry is the best way to go here. At the very least it looks great. And generally, it seems to me, that smooth looking form translates into efficiency and better use of energy. Carry on.

Cornering: Sweeping through a fast set of corners without the brakes and right on the wheel of some guy (PT!) who's riding just a bit faster than you is just the best best best part of a cross race!

Barriers: These barriers were just the perfect distance apart for me. Two steps between and then over the next one and then push the bike up a hill to a gravel straight. This section went well. Anyway ... and also, when being followed: it goes like this. I really am only aware of who's just ahead of me. Maybe once in a while I'll get a sense that there's someone behind me when I hear a grunt, or a missed shift, or I see a shadow in the trees, but usually I'm just looking forward. At this point in this race I really thought that there was some significant distance - says three seconds worth - between me and the next guy. How wrong could I be? Well it's pretty clear. BVDB is just on my ass, and I believe The Impaler is just behind him. Geez. I think we were on the third lap of five here. BVDB passed me (he always does - he says I'm his bunny - nice to be useful for something) on the fourth or fifth lap. So that means that for more than a full lap he was on my wheel. Weird. I don't know if it would have been better if I'd known all along. Probably not. I get nervous when people follow me.

Straights/Downhills: I'm always tempted to rest on these, but resting during a cross race is dumb dumb dumb. You can do that when it's over and you have a beer in your hand. During the race it has to go like this: Take a bigger gear! Go faster! Even so, JL blew by me at the finish. Damn. And that's it from #dbness

CX 2013 Race #5 - Results

Okay, so this season has been going pretty well for me. At least I feel like it's been going pretty well. Pretty well enough to be seeded to start in the front row for two races! What? I know. I can't really comprehend it either. That's me with my head down. I think my heart knows what the cross gods are going to serve up.

But like I said, I'm starting in the first row. I'm getting good starts. I've got new brake pads. The BeachCross course looks like it should work for me. I'm not sick. I'm not even sick at heart. 

And the start is fine too. I'm feeling good and the right guys are ahead of me, and right guys are behind me and it's already the third lap, and we hit the windy, grassy, leaf-covered section, and I look up and over to see who's coming up behind me (you know how it goes during a cross race where you start meeting the same riders and the same place on the course and you think, Huh, I thought/hoped I was going faster, but it looks like we're actually all going exactly the same speed) and sure enough there's RF about a turn and a half behind and I'm thinking that he might be gaining on me and I'm thinking some more (too much too much too much thinking - stop with the thinking already and keep your eyes on the track and ride hard dammit!) and then I'm watching my hand push its way through my front wheel, and I'm down. Off the bike. 

So I get up and get back on and push forward, but the wheel doesn't turn, at least not easily. Shit. It's probably just the quick release, I think. So I duck under the tape and pull it off the course to loosen the wheel and line it up again and spin it. But there is no spin, there is only a lot of wobble and bind, and I look up then at the line of riders that are long by and into the sand section, and then I'm thinking about stopping.
You know what it's like to want to stop. If you've raced a cross race, you know what it's like to want to stop. You also know what it's like to want to keep going. To need to keep going. Which is what I did. 

This all reminded me of two things. First the wise words of some fellow rider while on a technical mountain bike ride a few years ago: "Look where you want to go! Your bike will follow your eyes." Which makes so much sense. Which I hadn't been doing, because I was thinking about results and about who was behind me and by how much. And then I remembered a race two years ago at La Barriere where I was catching up to JS. I was sure of it. And I was looking ahead at him on the third time through this windy stretch and I was telling myself that for damn sure I was closer to him on this lap than the last one and I really wanted to beat JS because I should! I just should be able to beat him ... and then I was looking at the tape and then at the grass, and then my wheel was jammed against the brakes, and that time I could put it back and it was okay, but JS was long gone, and that was that. 

This is not a moral, this is a fact. Worrying about riding hard and well and watching the course and keeping your brain on the race works. Worrying about results and who's ahead and who's behind can and will fuck you up. So, here's me really smiling while racing. I'm usually looking pretty intense, or pretty gassed. I'm sure it was taken after I went down. After I'd given up the results and just decided to ride and enjoy the course, and riding after a whisky hand up changes things too.

So here's to riding with your kid (!) and recovering with friends, and not worrying too much about results. 

(But I'm terrible at following my own advice, so I'll probably be anxious as hell again, after the Thanksgiving break. Still Southern Cross will be awesome!)

CX 2013 Race #4 - What a difference a year makes!

Mennocross 2012 was memorable and momentous for me (and others, I'm told) because it was hot (30'C) and sunny and before my race was over, I looked like this:

Passed out. DNF. Pale and ugly. There's another picture of me that ran on the front page (online) of a local newspaper:

This picture was taken before the "fallen soldier" image above (snapped lovingly by my good and kind friend and fellow front-end curler, JPD, who then sent me a copy of it, but otherwise kept (keeps) it on his phone for safekeeping - and to show me on occasion as a remembrance of things past, as he did in the bar on the Thursday night before this year's MennoCross. "Remember last year?" he says, and smiles and fuszchels with his phone (a Blackberry! - they need all the good press they can get these days) for a few seconds and then shows me the picture that you have now seen as well) The caption on the more upright picture of me reads "A cyclocross racer competes ..." Right. At the time that picture was taken, and I remember the moment actually - this photographer crouching on the ground - this camera-wielding dude using a flash on the brightest day of Fall - popped it in my face just as I'm thinking, stay with it man, stay with it, just stay on your bike. Just ride and everything will be okay.

And in another minute or so, I was falling off of my bike and losing consciousness in the lovely arms of MS (my Neubergthal neighbour who'd come out to watch no less!) who laid me down and called for help. And then big T came around to help out (a lot), and then GeeVs, and after about an hour, I could stand up again.

But this year! This year! What a difference a year makes! This year the course looked like this ...

... and this ...

... and this ...

... and this:

And at the end of the race, I looked like this:

Pretty sweet actually. Sure I like the sun. Who doesn't? What with its right to claim primoridial authorship for life, etc. Pretty hot stuff. But me, when I'm cross-racing, I'd rather be a rain dog. Make it rain!

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.

CX 2013 Race #2 Ego Cross – Differences

Malcolm Gladwell’s latest piece for the New Yorker, Man and Superman, re-approaches the Lance story. He makes the obvious point that each of us, given a particular physical activity, and given our genetic situation, are given particular advantages and disadvantages. Some of us compete and rise above disadvantages, some of us compete and make the best of advantages, and some of us compete when we don’t even have a chance. From all of this Gladwell poses the question, how much may an athlete do to offset his/her built-in disadvantages, or how much of her/his natural advantage is within the bounds of fairplay in the first place. As if, he implies, we could make things fair for everyone, and then … we’d all race the race and … what? cross the line at the same time and join hands to sing a song in Who-ville?

I don’t know how much of this matters for the results of Sunday’s race, but some differences became obvious during the day. For instance, it became clear that some of us like racing on grass better than on hard-packed dirt track. I, standing at just under 5’ 7” and weighing around 150 lbs, don’t really mind the grass that much at all. My driving to the race friend, L, standing at around 6’ 8” and weighing more than 200 lbs minds the softness of grass and sand a lot. He loves the hard-pack though. Still, we raced in the same race, along with everyone else racing in B, and thus the results were somewhat different. At Dark Cross L beat me by nearly a minute. At Ego Cross I beat L by nearly a minute. Sure there are variables other than grass vs hard dirt, but the illustration stands: one element favours one rider, and another element favours the other. That's just the way this shit falls out.

5'7" me (photo courtesy of Rod Colwell)

6'8" L (photo courtesy of Rod Colwell)

For further consideration: L (left), me (right) (photo courtesy of FJR) 

Michael van den Hamm (photo courtesy of Rod Colwell)

Further to said differences, Michael van den Ham (above), a 20-something Brandon-area farm kid who rode at last year’s CX worlds and placed 31^st in the U23 race, was out to run a cross-clinic in the city on Saturday, and then race with us (well, some of us, the A-race some of us - which isn't me) on Sunday. Which he did, winning and finishing about a minute ahead of the second-place rider. Which also makes plain the difference between us out here, and the pros out there. Did I mention that van den Ham placed 31^st in the U23 race, and in this interview said that he was happy to have been able to stay on the lead lap?

With differences like these, a schmuck like me might well be tempted to pick-up a cruiser bike and relegate himself to commuting in comfort and style. But that’s not what I do. I do keep on riding, and accepting the differences in elements, terrain, energy-level from one day to the next. Why? Because the one thing that Gladwell doesn’t address is that these differences are actually what fair competition is about, and mature people confront and accept differences with both eyes open. I want to race L, and beat him, because he’s 6’ 8” and I’m not. When I start thinking (pitying myself most likely) that he was faster than me because he had some sort of immutable, unassailable, advantage on one course or another, I’m being an ungrateful, weak-kneed, little douche-bag about it. Because the best truth of all this is, that L and me, we buy/build our own bikes for whatever we can afford, we make sure they fit and work, and then we line-up on them at the start line and compete, “fair and square.” Our own differences are not the issue on any race course because on this day, this course is the same for both of us. We talk about it. We accept it. We take it. We leave it. We register for the next race. 

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.