My First Cyclocross Session

For the past couple of years, I've been thinking about this cyclocross thing. For those of you that don't know what that is you can look here or here. Well, I finally decided to see what it was all about. Columbus is fortunate to have some sort of club to facilitate an introduction to this sport. Cap City Cross runs weekly practices on Tuesday night. For people like me who have never tried the sport, it is an easy introduction that doesn't require signing up for a race.

My cardio vascular fitness is good but that didn't appear to be the factor required to go fast on this training course. There were quite a few heavy older guys that were just flying by me. Many of the women were quite a bit faster as well. I can hold my own on a road race and I do 'OK' on a mountain bike but this is going to take some practice.

Cornering is the first area of focus. A 180 degree turn on loose dirt or grass is slippery. I was almost coming to a complete stop. I was also getting some overlap between my front tire and my shoe. I don't ever remember having that problem on a mountain bike or on a road race. Quite a few times, I hit my shoe with my tire.

Riding on a slanted surface is also tough. My front tire slid out twice last night. I don't know if my weight distribution was wrong or if maybe my tire tread and pressure were not ideal. Everything was dry so it would be wicked on mud or wet grass.

The dismount and run over obstacles was not as tough as I thought. I was able to do a quick dismount and didn't have any trouble getting out of my pedal. Sometime I'll mess that up and go slamming into a barricade.

So here is the damage from last night.