Category: Cyclo-cross

Head for the hills

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment
Your roving reporter captures a shot of a socialist deer dining for free upon a taxpayer's shrubbery.
Your roving reporter captures a shot of a socialist deer dining for free upon a taxpayer's shrubbery.

It hasn’t exactly been cycling weather around Bibleburg of late — nevertheless, I sucked it up yesterday, pulled on about half the clothes in my closet and got out for two and a half hours of hills.

This is not as easy as it sounds. Despite sitting in the shadow of Pikes Peak, the road riding around Bibleburg is less than stellar, and the one long, sustained paved climb into the high country — Highway 24 west — is just plain dangerous, going up and coming down.

So a guy has to improvise. Though I was going to be mostly on pavement, I broke out my red Steelman Eurocross (fatter rubber, lower gearing) and rode west through a moderately gooey Monument Valley Park to Mesa Road, then started climbing.

Mesa is a nice warmup, a steady-state ascent that dumps you out on North 30th Street by the Garden of the Gods. From there I hung a right on Garden of the Gods Road and descended to Centennial Boulevard for another short climb to Fillmore Street, then hung a right and returned to Mesa.

I was thinking about doing laps of this short circuit to minimize my exposure to a nasty south wind, then said screw it and headed north on 30th to Flying W Ranch Road (hey, if you have a tailwind, why not take advantage of it?). Flying W is a steeper climb than Mesa, and a short 40-mph descent dumps you out at Centennial and Vindicator Drive for the pièce de résistance, the ascent of Centennial Boulevard/West Woodmen Road.

Centennial-Woodmen is steeper than any of its predecessors and something of a challenge for the average fat bastard. It’s one of those pain-in-the-ass climbs that flattens out every now and then, even throws in a couple of short descents, just to fuck with your head. It’s why I rode the Steelman with its low gear of 34×28.

Anyway, I made it up without throwing a rod or blowing a seal, and on the way down the other side I saw this pretty little buck with a couple of his cousins, so I stopped to take a snap with the iPhone. It reminded me of living outside Weirdcliffe, where we always had a few mule deer camping out under our deck. We used to say that they were so dumb you could hunt them with a Twinkie and a ball-peen hammer.

But we never saw one stupid enough to be riding a ’cross bike on the roads in the dead of winter.

Nys guys finish first

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
An oldie but a goodie. Still, damn. Look at the geezer stem. I call that an excuse for a new fork.
An oldie but a goodie. Still, damn. Look at the geezer stem on that thing. I call that an excuse for a new fork.

OK, every now and then I feel the urge to post something about cycling on this miserable site, and today is one of those days.

My man Bret W. tweeted about the Belgian national cyclo-cross championships this afternoon and posted a pair of links to video of the race, which was a lulu, even though it apparently included no running at all, which is bullshit.

The first half is here, the second here. Enjoy. And a tip of the Mad Dog liter-sized mug of Stella Artois goes out to Bret for keeping the video links coming via Twitter.

Meanwhile, I was out and about on the ’cross bike today my own bad self. Being my second outdoor ride on drop bars since The Day My Finger Went Sideways in mid-November, it was part of an ongoing experiment to determine what bike I can ride best with the least amount of stress on the damaged digit.

Yesterday it was the red Steelman Eurocross, which has clunky aftermarket Tiagra-level Shimano R500 8-speed brifters; the long throw from small ring to big ring proved irksome. Today I rode the Jamis Supernova; its 10-speed SRAM Rival was a little easier to manipulate, but not much.

When I got home, just for laughs, I aired up the tires on my DBR Prevail TT road bike and rode it up and down the block a few times, shifting from small ring to big and back again and hitting the brakes a few times. And whaddaya know? Its nine-speed Ultegra brifters work smooth like butter, even for Paddy Nine Fingers.

This is extra good news, since it’s the bike I’ll be riding around southern Arizona come March. I was afraid I was gonna have to go to a left-hand bar-end shifter with a top-mounted brake lever for the rear wheel. But given my “performance” today, a compact crankset is starting to look like a must-have item. Robert Byrd could’ve dropped me on the hills.

New year, same old dog

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

Today I managed a third consecutive day of outdoor cycling and field-tested my ability to fix a flat with a damaged digit. All is well. I froze my nuts off, true, but that’s nobody’s fault but my own for underestimating how much heat a fat bastard can generate riding a flat-bar cyclo-cross bike in subfreezing temperatures with a brisk north wind.

A windproof jacket would’ve been smart. Ditto full booties instead of toe covers. Hell, how ’bout staying indoors and drinking whisky out of the bottle? How many 55-year-old fat bastards do you know who are layering on the Lycra for a 90-minute ’cross-bike ride on a football Sunday when they could be in some warm pub drinking Clydesdale piss and sneaking peeks down the waitress’s blouse?

Yeah, I know. Plenty. And I was one of them. Because I am a dog with a mission — get fit enough to do the Adventure Cycling Association’s Southern Arizona Road Adventure in mid-March without embarrassing and/or killing myself.

Then I will write about it for Adventure Cyclist magazine, cash the check, and use the proceeds to buy warm clothing. Or whisky. Or both.

Blue bird

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 35 Comments
I really stuck the dismount this time. Even the East German judge gave me a 10.
I really stuck the dismount this time. Even the East German judge gave me a 10.

Hm. Been a little quiet around here lately, no? A couple shifts in the old VeloBarrel, some snow-shoveling, a bit of trying to learn my way around the new WordPress-based beta site, and a crash on the ’cross bike, and all of a sudden it’s five days later. How time does fly when you’re having fun.

For some reason yesterday I thought it would be smart to go for a short ride in the icy goo. Not so much, as it turns out, especially with a deadline looming. You wouldn’t believe how difficult it can be to dispense the wit and wisdom with only one functional hand. The other, as you can see, is sporting a splint to support its dislocated birdie finger, which I popped back into place as I was lying there in the puddle, the one masking the sheet of ice.

Road-raging motorists will get little in the way of obscene gestures from me over the next month, unless they park curbside to peek in through a living-room window and shout at me for riding an exercise bike.

Boulder Cup relocated

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
Harlow Platts Park circa 2005, when it wasn't buried under a ton of snow.
Harlow Platts Park circa 2006, when it wasn't buried under a ton of snow.

Bummer — Brook Watts advises that this Sunday’s Boulder Cup cyclo-cross will be relocated to the Boulder Reservoir after heavy snow that made it impossible to use Harlow Platts Park.

Says race director Chris Grealish: “The racers love Harlow Platts because of the challenging nature of the grassy terrain, but we have an agreement with the city of Boulder to make a move if conditions there risk long-term damage to the park.”

Too bad. Harlow Platts is a fun venue, but there’s no point in chewing it the hell up. And I wasn’t going to be able to go anyway, as Sunday is one of my days in the Velo-barrel.

Here’s a bit I wrote about the last race I saw there. Well, as usual, there’s not much in there about the actual race, but what the hell, it’s either read this or get back to work, right?