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.