You can’t always be the windshield. Some days you’re the bug.
It happened to Katie Compton yesterday at U.S. cyclocross nationals in Tacoma. She never looked quite herself, barring one stellar, gutsy, downhill pass early on. But she never quit — she hung grimly on to finish third behind Clara Honsinger and runner-up Rebecca Fahringer.
“Yeah, I’m disappointed, but mostly I just didn’t feel that great, and it’s always hard to not have your best day, but that’s OK,” Compton told Cyclingnews. “It’s good to see Clara and Becca riding as well as they are.”
And it’s good to see the 15-time national champ gutting it out to the finish, clawing her way back onto the podium when it looked like a lost cause, and praising the two riders who finally dethroned her. She may have lost the jersey, but she’s still a champion.
That old cyclocrossin’ gang of mine from the Nineties, at a race in Fort Collins. Lee Waldman (second from right) is still at it: He just took fifth in the 70-74 race in Tacoma.
If you’re weary of watching the mudslinging in DeeCee, why not change the channel to cyclocross nationals in Tacoma?
You can stream Sunday’s elite races live at Cyclocross Magazine‘s website or at USA Cycling’s YouTube channel. M’boy Tim Johnson will be providing commentary along with Meredith Miller and Brad Sohner.
Sounds like a runner’s course out there. My kind of course. I coulda been there instead of here, in Palookaville. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let’s face it.
The old DBR Axis TT still rolls a lot better than I do.
For a change it was the other fella on a cyclocross bike and Your Humble Narrator on a mountain bike.
I was descending a narrow bit of singletrack that he was climbing, so I found a small patch of shoulder and yielded trail.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“Great, thanks,” he replied with a grin.
Your cyclocrosser is nothing if not a perfect gent at all times. The rest of you lot could learn something from us.
Though now that I think about it, I suppose he could’ve been a gravel rider. I don’t know a thing about those tossers. A special bike for gravel, is it? D’ye also have ones for road and trail and track so? A cyclocrosser rides his machine where he will and devil take the hindmost.
Now you mention it, his tires did look a little plump for ’cross. Not honest 33mms like the ones on my Steelman.
The cheek of the fuckin’ bastards. Trying to pass themselves off as cyclocrossers on the singletrack. First they take our drop bars, then our knobbies, and before you can say Danny De Bie they’ll be making eyes at our daughters.
Thank God I was on a mountain bike. Now he doesn’t know that I know.
Don’t look for me in results — it’s been years since I raced the Quad, but I was pretty OK at it a time or two. The bike and run legs, anyway.
Hal’s wife, Mary, and I used to race it as a mixed pair, and we won in 1990, 1992 and 1993.
I was usually in decent shape, being tanned, rested and ready following a long cyclocross season. And Mary was always tip-top, living at altitude up Weirdcliffe way and running around with jackasses, some of them four-legged (ho, ho).
Quadware included Nambé medals and platters.
Hal, of course, did the whole thing solo, which always looked a bit too much like work to me. I was only so-so on snowshoes and an outright hazard on cross-country skis.
This was and remains a toy-heavy pasatiempo, and Hal’s truck would be stuffed to the topper with bikes, wheels, tires, skis, shoes, snowshoes and a ridiculous amount of clothing suited to any and all weather conditions.
Running shoes were augmented with sheet-metal screws in the soles for traction, in case there was ice on the run leg (there usually was).
Clip-on aero bars? Sometimes. Once I used a set of Scott Rakes to good effect, aero bars giving me The Fear on the descent back to Grants.
The bike was usually standard road. In 1990 I was rocking an aluminum Trek 1500 with 53/39 rings and a 13-24 freewheel.
I know I’ve written about the Quad before, but whatever I cranked out is squirreled away on a Zip disk somewhere or in an actual magazine, and I don’t feel like diving down those rabbit holes this morning.
However, I did find a reference to my first Quad in my 1990 training diary, and that reads as follows:
“Big-time pain. I don’t think I’ve felt this bad since I got the shit kicked out of me at Alamogordo last year. Bike leg was slower than I’d hoped for … and my uphill run was fucking awful. Downhill run was better — but not much — and the downhill bike was spiked by the Headwind from Hell.”
Yeah, good times. The Quad will never be the new golf.
• Editor’s note: Hal “Mr. Awesome” Walter notes that I lifted his faux curse “Quadammit” from one of his own works. This explains why a Spotlight search failed to turn it up on any of my hard drives; that, and an admittedly casual approach to petty theft. Give it a read.
I hope jolly ol’ St. Nick remembers to slather on the SPF 50 when he brings all my toys to the Duke City. Unless he wants his snoot to get redder than Rudolph’s.
Mad Blog Media 