Cross to Bear

The Giro heads out past the Lakeshore Drive floodgate.

The weekend's weather was nice and although I have been fairly unmotivated to push myself, I did manage to make both Giro Rides plus a little stroll through the City Park cyclocross course.  Turnout for the Giro was strangely low last weekend.  Perhaps it was just that there is so much going on around here this time of year.  As D and I rode to the Giro on Saturday we passed the big field in City Park where the Seafood Festival was set up.  Down along Harrison there was a big music stage also set up near Marconi.  Elsewhere, there were at least two other festival type things going on, so I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised, but the weather was so nice that  you would think more people would have made the effort to get in a ride.  Anyway, that's not to say that the groups were too small, just that they were smaller than usual.  On the plus side, the pace was also more steady.  I'd even go so far as to say that Sunday's Giro was pleasant.

Well, the first race of the Delta States Grand Prix cyclocross series is this Saturday over in City Park and the local Facebook groups are all atwitter about it.  Hardly anyone around here has enough relevant experience with cyclocross to be able to offer valid comments, but of course that isn't stopping anyone.  For me, it's just a fun change of pace where I'm more focused on riding around in the dirt and grass without falling too much than on actually being competitive.  However, a bunch of the local riders have recently acquired actual cyclocross bikes of one flavor or another and many are trying to cram in as much experience on them as possible.  It's basically like trying to get in shape for cyclocross all in one week.  I'll be officiating except for the race in which I'll hopefully be riding, and it's looking like turnout will be pretty strong.  By strong, I mean there will probably be at least thirty riders.  Considering that we haven't had a cyclocross season around here since 2011, and even then the turnout was pretty low, that's actually quite encouraging. Of course, everyone has a different opinion about the course.  The group that's been helping put on the race has actually put in a huge, huge amount of work creating a cyclocross course basically from scratch in an area of the park that was once part of the golf course but has been basically abandoned for at least the past seven or eight years.

I went out and rode it on Sunday after the Giro after having tried it out briefly a few days prior to that. (Kenny posted some video of the course on youtube.) This time I had the tire pressure down to about 50 psi, which I think helped. I might even be able to go a little lower.  Interestingly, I found a pair of not very knobby cyclocross tubulars at home and could make up a wheelset from some old 5- speed wheels I have hanging around but it almost doesn't seem worth the effort. Almost all of the course feels really, really bumpy, and a lot of it plows through some rather thick grass, so there is almost no place where you feel like you can get up any significant speed.  If you wanted to be competitive on this course you'd have to keep the power on practically the whole time.  It's also basically flat as a pancake, so to make up for that there are a lot of very tight turns, some sand that was no doubt once part of the golf course's sand traps, and a couple of spots that could be really wet and muddy if there's any rain.  I'm hoping we don't have any head-on collisions along a couple of stretches where there is basically two-way traffic. Although it's a challenging course, I can't really say it's a fun one.  Personally, I like the courses with some nice sweeping downhills, hard-packed roads or trails, and maybe an uphill run-up somewhere.  I'm not particularly good at those things, but they do make a course more interesting.  On the plus side, though, it won't be cold and there will probably be some actual spectators to see me stumble over the barriers and impale my crotch on the Pennine's vintage Concur saddle which is probably the newest component on the whole bike.  I really need to lower that thing a bit.  Anyway, it should be a fun event one way or the other.  The next day, on Sunday, there's the annual Tour of Jefferson across the river, so I might go ride that if I don't break anything on Saturday.