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.