Month: January 2014

‘Cross purposes

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
The off-camber bit, which had about two "good" lines.
The off-camber bit, which had about two “good” lines.

If you’re anywhere near Boulder this weekend, get thee to the USA Cycling Cyclocross National Championships at Valmont Park.

It’s been a good long while since I attended nats, either as a racer or a rumormonger, but my brief inspection tour of the 2014 circuit left me seriously impressed with how course design has improved in my absence. (It may help to have a cycling-specific park in which to host one’s event; I was never so fortunate.)

Express elevator to Hell, going down!
Express elevator to Hell, going down!

There’s a little something for everyone on the rolling circuit — run-ups on stairs and in mud; a sand pit; scary, sloppy descents; bumpy, steeply off-camber bits; a whole bunch of cornering; and on Thursday, anyway, lots of slippery goo. A “heavy” course, in other words. Pete Webber did a fine job setting it up, and then went on to win today’s masters 40-44 race. Chapeau.

I watched a couple of masters events — women 40-44 and men 50-54 — and caught up with an old racing rival, Mike Spak (at right in this photo). He finished 25th in the 60-64s and said that first trip down the mudslide was a doozy. A Slip’N Slide full of extended legs, chainrings and cursing, I bet. I would’ve been one of the dudes making the most noise, what with white knuckles exploding on brake levers, explosive bowel evacuations and ear-splitting screams.

The descent leads to a long staircase run followed by an off-camber plummet reminiscent of Satan’s descent from Heaven:

Hurl’d headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky,

With hideous ruin and combustion, down

To bottomless perdition. …

OK, maybe it wasn’t quite that bad, but there were only two lines and both of them looked like Hell to me.

The rest of the course basically heaps insult atop injury, with another short staircase run, a sand pit and lots of little bits of this, that and the other, all of which add up to being nibbled to death by zombie ducks.

Word is it’s windy out there today, with temps in the 50s, and Webber told Cyclocross Magazine that it was “a dry and fast course.” If the weather holds, tomorrow should be even more so.

If you can’t make it there in person, you can catch live streaming video of the marquee events starting with the U23 race at 12:30 p.m. Mountain time today.

• Late update: If you missed the live stream, what you missed was largely a one-man show, a wire-to-wire ass-whuppin’ administered by first-year U23 Logan “See Ya, Wouldn’t Want To Be Ya” Owen. You can catch a replay at USA Cycling’s YouTube channel. But the part everyone is talking about is his teammate Cody Kaiser’s riding — hopping, actually — of the Belgian Stairs. Watch and enjoy.

Here’s mud in your eye

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments
This may be a shot of my final cyclo-cross, in Memorial Park. I rode to the race, without a spare bike, and promptly flatted just a coupe of laps in. DNF.
This may be a shot of my final cyclo-cross, in Memorial Park. I rode to the race, eschewing a spare bike, and promptly flatted just a couple of laps in. DNF.

Cyclo-cross nats got off to a sloppy start today in the People’s Republic. I thought about motoring up to watch the industry race, maybe provide a little sage advice to the competitors — “Hey, that looks just like cyclo-cross, only slower!” — but chores got in the way.

I had to content myself with tweeting, “Guess how many guys in the industry race at CX nats will be riding steel bikes and cantis and win a free trip to are you fucking kidding me?”

Yes, I’m that old. Steel frames, threaded steerers, cantilever brakes, seven-speed freewheels, bar-end shifters, Lyotard 460 pedals with double steel Christophe toeclips and Alfredo Binda toe straps, Vittoria Mastercross and WolberCross 28 Extra tires, the works.

You see anyone riding a rig like that in Boulder 2014, you’ll know you’ve died and gone to Cyclo-cross Hell.

Still, it was big fun. It’s hard to believe I haven’t raced ’cross for 10 years — and even harder to believe that I haven’t attended nationals since 1999 in San Francisco, where I covered the race for a now-defunct sporting website.

I raced nats only once — in 1992, in Golden — and just missed a top-10 finish in the masters 35s. That was it for actually racing the sonofabitch. But I covered the championships in 1994 and ’94, in Seattle; helped lay out the 1997 course in Lakewood; and finally wrote up the race for the last time in ’99 at The Presidio.

It would have been amusing to old-school it at this year’s industry race — time-travel into the 21st century aboard the old Steelman Eurocross with its eight-speed Ultegra, Paul’s Neo-Retro cantis and Michelin Jet/Mud clinchers — but lord, would I ever have gotten my fat ass handed to me. They’d have been timing me with a calendar, and a paper one at that.

• Editor’s note: Unlike Your Humble Narrator, Cyclocross Magazine is on the scene.

Fenderhead

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments
That old cyclo-crossin' gang of mine, following a 1990s race in Fort Collins.
That old cyclo-crossin’ gang of mine, following a 1990s race in Fort Collins.

A long time ago, in a peloton far, far away, when it got to be too cold or sloppy to train on the road bike one of the Dogs would invariably propose, “How’bout riding mountain bikes on the road?”

It makes sense, if you think about it. Big ol’ tires for traction. Closer to the ground for purposes of falling onto same. Lower average speed and thus less wind chill. Add fenders and you don’t even get the deadly Brown Stripe of Shame.

So that’s what I did today. Dug up a pair of strap-on, zip-tie Planet Bike fenders for the DBR ti’ and went out for my second mountain-bike ride of 2014. That’s about two more than I did in 2013*, and it’s only Jan. 7.

This also means that five — five! — of my bikes now sport fenders. A sixth has a set, but isn’t presently wearing them. And I have an extra pair in case I feel like going for Lucky No. 7. You can’t stop me!

And to think I once lived for cyclo-cross, the entire purpose of which is to get cold, wet and filthy dirty, all at the same time. How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!

*Purists will note that I rode a buttload of 29ers during 2013, but that doesn’t count. I’m talking 26-inch hardtail here. Who rides one of those in 2014? Besides me, that is?