Category: Bicycle racing

What is the sound of no snow falling?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments
One of the very dry washes on today’s hike.

Dude, we got to bed at midnight, after mildly terrifying descents of both the Eisenhower Tunnel and Fremont Pass in the giant bus sleigh, which . . . barely made it the last miles to the college due to a mechanical issue. Also, it only had one headlight. — Hal Walter, who joined son Harrison for a Colorado Mountain College team bus trip to the NJCAA Region IX Championships Oct. 28 in Beatrice, Neb., after their return to Leadville in the dreaded wintry mix

We may be short of water here in The Duck! City, but we are also light on what state departments of transportation call “winter driving conditions,” a state of transportation that I do not miss in the slightest.

I don’t drive much in any conditions these days. Duck! City motorists lean toward the Four I’s — Inept, Inattentive, Impaired, and Insane — and are reliably unpredictable under sunny skies on dry roads.

So, even in good weather, I tend to limit my happy motoring to the weekly grocery run. That way the odds are 50-50 that I’ll have something to snack on while waiting for the paramedics.

And winter driving?  Cyclocross may have ruined that for me before I ever got to The Duck! City. I always loved racing in mud and snow, because I was a strong runner, but unless I was promoting the event I was at least an hour’s drive from whatever soupy and/or snowy mess awaited me.

If the forecast were particularly dire I might drive up the day before a race, treat myself to a motel room and a restaurant meal. My ass didn’t always get a whuppin’, but my wallet pocket did.

Once, when we were living in Crusty County, I nearly slid off the icy descent of State Highway 96 through Hardscrabble Canyon en route to a race in Pueblo with the Bicycle Racing Association of Colorado’s cyclocross race kit — and my own race kit, including two expensive bicycles — piled high in the bed of my 2WD Toyota truck.

“2WD Toyota truck?” you inquire? Why, yes, it was blindingly pig-ignorant, thickheaded, and just plain stick-ass dumb of me, especially since I also owned a 4WD Toyota truck, and thanks for asking.

But as I recall the BRAC kit was already stacked in the bed of the 2WD truck, moving it over to the 4WD would’ve been a hassle, and surely the extra weight of all those plank barriers, metal stakes, and Reynolds 853 Steelman Eurocrosses would help keep the rubber on the road?

Just barely, as it turned out. Somehow I managed to keep the truck out of Washout Creek and the front end pointed downhill and made it to Pueblo in plenty of time to see hardly anyone turn out for the race because … well, it was in Pueblo.

Most of the racing then, as now, was in the Boulder-Denver clusterplex. It’s where I had to go to fetch the race kit. And if you can race twice a weekend just one cup of bespoke java from home, well. …

This was one of the reasons our Bibleburg races drew about half the entrants of a Boulder ’cross. In The Steal City, yet another hour’s drive south in bad weather, the race organizers were lucky to draw flies. Why was I there? Because I was the schmuck with the race kit.

Eventually I wised up. My last race was in Bibleburg, after we gave up on Crusty County. I didn’t promote it. Didn’t fetch the race kit. Rode my bike to the race.

It should go without saying that since I didn’t think to bring a spare bike slung over one shoulder, I flatted about halfway through and chalked up a big fat DNF in my final cyclocross.

After I replaced the punctured tube, I hung around for a while to heckle the Boulder-Denver contingent — “Hey, that looks just like cyclocross, only slower!” — and then pedaled lazily home.

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. But it was a beautiful day just the same.

Marching along

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments
We went from gray to white in the blink of a shutter.

God is pitching softballs at us (graupel), and the temp just fell 10 degrees in as many minutes.

Looks like I won’t need to slather on the SPF 70 for that bike ride I won’t be doing.

Last year, March 2 was “sunny, virtually windless, 61-65°,” according to my training log. I was doing hill repeats and pulling off the arm and knee warmers.

Big Bill McBeef chases Your Humble Narrator upslope in a rare March cyclocross in Bibleburg.

And to think this year I haven’t even pulled them on. When I get out I’m still wearing long sleeves and tights. The only bit of me showing any color is my nose, and I think that’s windburn.

Well, March is always belligerent. Named for the Roman god of war, it marked the beginning of ass-kicking season, and it has kicked mine many a time.

In March 1994 the Mad Dogs put on a cyclocross in Monument Valley Park just to see what would happen and the answer was, “Not much.”

When even the cyclocrossers think you’re insane you might want to check yourself into the screw factory for a vigorous rethreading. We’d have gotten a bigger turnout promoting a St. Patrick’s Day pub crawl in Qatar.

 

Here’s mud in your eye (or not)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
My 1998 Steelman Eurocross didn’t get muddy today, either.
I’da wanted mud, I’da had to pee a damp spot into the dust.

The great thing about being a retired cycling scribe is that if there’s a race going on that you don’t care about, you don’t have to watch.

So instead of finding some way to catch cyclocross worlds over the Innertubes, I went out and rode my own damn cyclocross bike for 90 minutes.

Your Humble Narrator on the job during a rare soft day at the Bear Creek Cyclo-cross. As you can see, I am a veritable blur of activity.

I watched one lap of yesterday’s women’s race on YouTube earlier in the day, and that was enough. The Fayetteville course looks like a lot of fun, and I hope it hosts many years of exciting racing.

But I’m sorry. I gotta have filth.

No knock against the race organization — they couldn’t get a hammerlock on the Arkansas legislature, so you know they can’t control the weather — but I gots to have me some evil weather, mud and/or snow, equipment failures, spectacular crashes, pit strategy, and all the rest of the unpredictability sweepstakes that keeps a ’cross from turning into a dirt crit.

I promoted a few dirt crits in my day, but in my defense I will say that the Dogs at Large Velo races in Bibleburg were always intended to provide a gentle transition from road season to ’cross season. Occasionally we got a bit of weather to make the Bear Creek course interesting, but generally it was pretty predictable.

Me, I lived for the sloppy conditions we’d get at Chatfield, Fort Collins, or the horse park in Franktown. The kind of race where you spend so much time off the bike and running that your cyclocomputer goes to sleep. And you have to clean up in a nearby car wash afterward — bike, spare bike, and kit —  because the wife caught you doing it in the shower once and you’re lucky she still lets you into the house, much less your slime-soaked gear.

Of course, the course and conditions don’t seem to have much effect on the actual finishing order. I notice the strong people mostly win wherever and whenever.

So, congrats to all the freshly minted world champions in Fayetteville. I hope that shiny new kit gets dirty one of these days.

WallyWorlds

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
The Stud, retired from the bike shop, found himself with a little free time and more than a few unpaid bills.

The UCI-Walmart 2022 Cyclocross World Championships kick off today in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

I won’t be there, and neither will my old ’cross buddy Brook Watts, whose baby this is.

Or was, before the political climate in Arkansas took a distinct turn for the worse, presenting him with an insurmountable run-up to race day.

Those were not cheering throngs at courseside. Cowbells were out, bullshit was in. Not even shoe spikes would help, unless applied to asses, and maybe not even then. Some days a fella can wear out a couple dozen pair of kneecaps kicking ass and all he gets is practice.

You can read Brook’s take on the whole mess at VeloNews. And for those of you who enjoy such things, here’s a hot GoPro lap of the course.