For those of us who have raced cyclocross (or Cross for short)... we all know what a great cross course looks like. But for anyone reading one of these blogs and is new to the sport... Cycloross, never mind what makes up a good Cross course will be as foreign as trying to pick up a new language, so let give you a bit of insight into our crazy little world.
Cyclocross is like racing a combined on road/off road obstacle course, on a road bike with knobbier tires. A max of 20% of the course is paved roads, the balance is either dirt roads, off camber grass, gravel, or some combination of the two. The course is about 1 - 2 miles in length and we race the lap several time. The races are just shy of a hour... but trust me, you are racing at full tilt, so for that hour... it's about all the pain you can handle.
The sport runs from September thru January so the winter elements are clearly one of the obstacles... snow, ice and mud being one of them. Some of the obstacles are man made, others are what the terrain has to offer. I think it's fair to say that we are off the bike and running about 10% -20% of the time in good conditions... and I have been off the bike up to 35% of the time in really ugly (mud) conditions.
So, with the above in mind... what makes a good cross course a great cross course? It has to be fun, challenging, interesting and favors NO ONE specific rider. Some courses favor big horse power riders and the highly technical riders are at a disadvantage, other courses are so technical the strongest rider doesn't have a chance if their technical skills aren't as sharp, so you really want a well balanced course that will bring the best out of the cross racer. A well balanced course isn't easy to build and with that said... much of it is weather dependent, which leads me to my main thoughts for today.
There has been a ton of chatter around the National Cyclocross course in Madison. Yup... It's already built (yes, these courses are pain stakingly laid out well in advance of the race). As soon as the course was built, some dude jammed a camera on his helmet, cruised around the course and gave a 10 meter by 10 meter description of the course in great detail... which as you can imagine, caused every armchair cyclocross course building expert the opportunity to criticize the fact that it was either "too flat, too boring, too easy... it's going to turn into a super highway with no technical aspect at all"... yaadaa, yaadaa.
I am not going to offer comment about the course (at least not until I get there)... but I will tell you about what happened a few years ago in Kansas when they said exactly the same thing. That was BEFORE the ice storm that we got hit with here in NE that left us without power for days... remember that??? Well, that storm blew right through Kansas the day before we got into town to race Nationals and when we went to look at the course, what everyone initially complained as being too flat, boring, easy and unchallenging, now had frozen ice standing on the entire course the consitency of a cheese grater. Where there wasn't ice, there was frozen rutted mud. NOW everyone was whining it was too dangerous to race and they would have to either change the course or postpone the race for a week, because too many people would be injured.
Me... I was hoping for a minor miracle... I was hoping for a spectacularly massive power outage and things would just get pushed out a few hours so the cheese grater ice would start to thaw into at least slush, but Tom advised me, "thats why they had generators, we're gonna race on the ice". So ... on that note, I reassessed my tire pressure, let some air out and learned how to race on cheese grater ice (which by the way, if you crash on cheese grater ice, it will shred a skin suit faster than you can say "Wooopseee").
So... it turned out to be a great Nationals Course after all. It was fun, challenging, techical and it did in fact bring the best out of the cross racer favoring no one particular rider... other than maybe putting the "baby's" at a disadvange.
I checked the Madison weather this morning... it's a mix of ice and snow. The boring course is now in the process of becoming less boring!
Talk with you soon.
Kath
