Two Wheel Blogs

I tell you, it's an inside out world. I went out for a spin today, and the story that came alive was one of those ass-backwards "How did we get ourselves here?" kind of things. I don't know if you call it irony or satire or what. I'll let you decide.

I hadn't been on my Karate Monkey for a while but I needed something recovery-ish, so I decided to do a little cyclocross style riding. There's this big grassy field nearby that's perfect for that sort of thing. I just wanted an easy spin so I figured about 30-45 minutes of riding around in the sun would be great. We had another one of those best-ever Fall days going. No way I was going to miss it. So far so good. The upside down world thing happened when I got on the grass.

Oh boy this cyclocross stuff looks like a lot of work. I just got back from the local cyclocross races. I saw a ton of good racing and even more pain and suffering.

Looked like stark raving mad fun to me.

I'm definitely going to have to give this a try. All I need is a frame and fork and a whole bike's worth of components.

And probably a lot more top end fitness.

I didn't see much time trialing going on. Every bit of the way racers surged and braked and poured on the gas yet again. Technical skills are a must. You better be able to grind some too. There were a few of those slow gradual climbs to tempt a racer into the red zone. Most of the riders that went by were huffing and puffing the whole way.

I'm not too wild about those barriers though. I saw a couple of riders catch a foot and fall over them. While the laying down part sounds attractive the getting there from a dead run with bike in hand sounds pretty painful. Nobody got hurt though. Falling down on grass is a lot better for a body than falling on asphalt or concrete at 30mph.

We had a great time watching them all go round and round. I can see why people like cyclocross so much.

Here are a couple of the better photos I got from the race, plus a larger version of the one above.

Despite feeling like crap yesterday - residual fatigue and/or general tiredness from poor food, lack of sleep, odd hours and wall to wall meetings and presentations - I decided I would get my butt back in the saddle. Most times when I don't feel like riding it's because of the old rule that a body at rest wants to remain at rest. When I get myself going the other rule takes over, the one that says a body in motion wants to stay in motion.

That's an important rule and it worked well for me yesterday. I think it took all of about 5 minutes of warming up. The fog lifted and the sludge washed away. I felt once again like a human being. Actually more like a super-human being. Maybe even a pro. OK, probably not that good.

Because of all the catching up I needed to do around the house and an evening event I couldn't get out on the road or trail. The weather wasn't all that great anyway, so I just hopped on my trainer for what I thought would be a quick easy workout, a reintroduction to riding a bicycle. My plan was just to ride easy for a little over an hour and get loosened up, maybe break a sweat.

This might give a little better idea of what the runup was like. I didn't really take a photo of the whole thing but you can see by looking at the backbround kind of how long and steep it was. Many racers were portaging the bike up this hill. This makes no sense to me. I would much rather push those 18 to 20 pounds up the hill than carry it.

Yes indeed. A hill of about 40 yards that was pretty steep with three barriers in it! But that's not all. The hill came at the end of a parking lot section and there was a very high curb which you had to go over and then there was the first barrier at the base of the hill. So there was no way to ride up it and I don't think (air) Pirtle even thought of bunny hopping it.

This was my favorite photo of the weekend. The mighty Butthead (going up the hill here) put on quite a show and destroyed the competition with a hard steady pace in the A race. Two more races left. It will be interesting to see if Air Pirtle will comeback and respond to this little bit of schooling that he received today.

As for yours truely, I was off. I had missed a lot of sleep the night before due to one of those sinus headaches that gets me from time to time. I tried racing for a couple of laps but it just wasn't going to happen. I didn't want to bury myself any further so I shut down and got out the camera. A race photos are up here. More to come later this week.

This is my teammate James on his SS '9er. At first glance you might think that fork is a suspension type but it is a rigid carbon. It's very clean looking when you see it up close. James has been rocking the house this year. Several top finishes in the C race. he may have to move up next year.