Two Wheel Blogs

I hooked up with Boz this afternoon, who took me to Cylcocross School. The classroom was Queeny Park. Class proceeded as follows.

First, Boz set up his PVC barriers so he could demonstrate me how to do a rolling dismount, hoist and carry, and remount. He made it look easy. I tried a few and demonstrated a rudimentary understanding of the basics. But the sequence is something you have to do repeatedly before it feels natural. I expect this will be one of several weak areas for me in tomorrow's race.

Next, we played a game of Follow The Leader to give me practice making tight corners. Boz rode a slalom route around every tree he could find; I followed. At this point, we had not been riding long -- maybe 15 minutes -- and I was already feeling it. "Great," I thought, "if this is how I feel after 15 minutes of light riding, what am I going to feel like tomorrow?" (It was at this point that my recurring vision of my having my a** handed to me made its first appearance of the afternoon. It would be followed by many more.)

After that, Boz took me on a roll through Queeny Park, a beautiful place to ride. Or run. Or walk. Or walk dogs. We saw a lot of people walking dogs. Back in my running days, I used to run the trails around Queeny Park. I've not been back since I had to stop running. It was good to see them again, even if I was seated and rolling on wheels. We finished off this part of the workout with a hill climb, one Boz uses to do his hill repeats. Normally, he does five in a row, then rides hard for twenty minutes after the last one. Today, forunately, we stopped at one. "Now that we've got some fatigue in your legs, let's try those dismounts again."

So we rode back to the barriers and, with my tired legs, I tried a couple dismounts. The first one was okay, but my remount was a little rough. On the second one, my dismount/hoist-and-carry were fine, but when I planted the bike and went to remount ... I don't know ... I did something wrong and did a semi-spectacular somersault and SPLAT! onto my back. Boz enjoyed it. I wish I could have seen it. "Welcome the world of cyclocross," he chuckled.

That concluded the technical part of the lesson. After that, we sat down and talked about the race, what to expect, and what to watch out for -- including the possibility that the course could include a flyover structure known as "The Green Monster." I plan to go out easy, to pace myself, to try to learn how best to ride the course as the race proceeds, and above all, do the best I can. It doesn't matter where I finish, as long as I spend most of the race upright and untangled from other riders. If I can do that, it will have been a good day.

After I left Boz's house, I drove back to Queeny, changed clothes, and went for a run through it. I had to for two reasons. First, there are two cross country races I could run tomorrow. One is a 5K at SIUE at 9:30 a.m. The other is a 5k at the cyclocross course before the bikes races. I could run either one. And back in my running days, I would have wanted to run both of them. But to make sure I don't run either one tomorrow, I ran tonight. In that sense, tonight's was a pre-emptive run.

But more important, I love running Queeny Park. As I've posted earlier, I loved running around Forest Park because doing so made me feel like a part of St. Louis. Otherwise, St. Louis is just the place where I work and do my radio show. Queeny Park was the other place in St. Louis I used to love to run. Like the SIUE cross country course, it's the perfect combination of beautiful scenery and a challenging route. Queeny has some wicked hills in it, as bad as those on the SIUE course if not worse. It's a great place for not running fast, and right now, I'm all about not running fast.

I did time the run (I always do) because I use time/pace as a measure of effort. I was not trying to run hard. I just wanted to run around the park. And, now about 4:30 p.m., this was the perfect time to do so. The sun was just beginning to set, and the early evening light made the skyline glow. It was good to run Queeny again, just as it had been good to get my first lesson in the finer points of cyclocross from Boz earlier. On the whole, it was a very good way to spend the afternoon -- yes, even if it leads to me getting my a** handed to me tomorrow.