a midway bikelog

update with results: 16th out of 98 overall, 15th out of 76 for the C1 race, not too shabby.

A little break from landslide election coverage for some bike content, for a change. I had a delayed start to the ‘cross season this year, with some busy weekends lately, but i was back into it yesterday with the return of cyclocross to Theodore Wirth Park in Mpls.

Wirth Park was the location of my first cyclocross race ever, in 1992. I was 24, had only heard of the race a couple of days before and had only the vaguest idea of what cyclocross was about, just that it was on dirt and i could use my mountain bike. I showed up barely in time to register, hungover, with a belly full of White Castle and with no clue what to expect. I went to the line with a field of maybe 10 total and just rode my ass off, following people the first lap to learn the course and just trying to hang on. I finished 2nd.

This race was different. I was NOT hungover, there were 103 riders in the C race, and i rode 3 laps before the race start. I didn’t finish quite as well this year, but not bad for my first race of the year, with little training, and my first race on a singlespeed. The course was very mountain bike-oriented; to be expected in a park featuring a good network of singletrack. There were riders complaining that the course was too hard or too rough, but it was right up my alley. The singletrack sections were fast and narrow, no room to pass. Between that and the 2 long switchbacks, there wasn’t a lot of room on the course to pass, so the strategy came down to sprinting into position before the bottleneck each time. On the other hand, i was able to make a few passes just off the beaten path, and on the last lap, squeezing on the inside of the hairpin turn (luckily and happily not crashing and taking out 3 others).

skinny-armed bike geek photo from skinnyski.com