“Never go into battle without your weapons.”
By JER–Part 1
It was an idea straight out of the rubbish pile.
Whose rubbish it was, I have no idea, but while trolling the soul-crushing complimentary food buffet in a United Airlines lounge, I spied a discarded magazine next to a plate of shriveled carrot sticks and anemic cocktail olives. I noticed it because the cover was a photo of freshly-harvested round bales in a field. Sure, there was a cyclist riding by the hay field and the magazine was called ‘Bicycling’, but that wasn’t really what caught my eye. Those bales looked like quality hay.
But I took the mag and read it anyway, like you do when killing time in an airport lounge. A few pages in, past lots of ads for brightly-colored stretchy clothing and bicycle seats designed to ease anatomical anxiety, there was an article about something called ‘cyclocross’. The photo was of a cyclist on foot, carrying his bike, jumping over a hurdle. Intrigued, I read on, learning that cyclocross involves riding laps around fields or parks while having to occasionally dismount and carry your bike over manmade or natural obstacles. That, to me, sounded a lot like cross-country, except that we don’t plan our dismounts and we’re no longer allowed to remount.
Two quotes spoke straight to my heart. One: “Because you’re doing laps, you don’t have to worry about being dropped.” And then: “In ‘cross, no one gives a rat’s ass what you wear.”
I thought, I have got to try this.
But before I go on, a mini-manifesto on the semantics of cyclocross. Cyclocross is usually abbreviated by cognoscenti as ‘cross. While you pronounce it much the same as the bit of wood to which Christ was affixed, ‘cross is always written ‘cross, avec apostrophe. It’s annoying to look at and a PITA to type. I mean, do we write ‘phone or ‘plane anymore? But there it is: ‘cross, ‘cross, ‘cross. Especially irritating if you’re texting.
So as of now, I’m starting a new linguistic tradition: it’s called cross. Jesus died on it, you’ll ride on it.
Everyone still with me?
Back at home, I google ‘Vancouver’ and ‘cyclocross.’ Three hits down, I see a notice for a cyclocross skills clinic in a city park, scheduled for this coming Saturday, in preparation for the first race of the BC season, which was taking place on Sunday at a dairy farm out in the Fraser Valley. A clinic and a race in five days! Beginners welcome and if you don’t have a proper cross bike (think road bike with wider, slightly-knobby tires), you can bring a mountain bike. I have a mountain bike. This has to be a sign to me, personally, from the gods of cross.
Sensing a future in the sport, I email the organizer. See you on Saturday, he writes back.
My entire training regimen consists of taking my bike in for a tune-up. I also watch a couple of cyclocross bloopers videos on YouTube, just to see how bad the crashes are. It’s mostly people sliding around in mud, ice, snow and rain in their stretchy outfits. No rotational falls, no riders getting crushed by their twenty pound bikes. No need for controversial inflatable clothing.
The Clinic
Saturday is breezy with bright sun. Perfect weather for learning how to jump over things while carrying your bike. As I pedal down to our designated meeting place, I notice a group of elderly Chinese practicing the ancient art of Tai Chi. I’m thinking about how this is a good omen, presaging a day of balance and harmony, until I get closer and realize this group isn’t doing Tai Chi at all. What they’re doing is called The Hustle. An ancient art, all right, but from a very different dynasty.
The clinician, Aaron, is a current national cyclocross team member. His clothing is a word cloud of logos, more business names than I’ve ever seen aggregated on a single living creature. If he gets any more sponsors, he’ll have to gain twenty pounds to make more fabric space available. My fellow students of cross are amateur cyclists, all with proper cross bikes, dressed in their club outfits. All but one have experience in this discipline. Uh-oh. After Aaron gives his short introductory talk, he asks if there are any questions about cross racing. Right off the top of my head, I think of two: Can you hit people? Are there free snacks?
But I decide these questions can wait till later. I don’t want to scare anyone just yet.
Our first task is to learn the proper cross dismount. You swing your right leg over, lean your right hip into the seat – which I learn is actually called the saddle! – and, as you stand on the pedal with your left foot, grab the top tube in front of the saddle with your right hand. Then you coast until you need to step off and hit the ground running. Not hard at all. Easier than sliding off a horse. Your bike doesn’t stomp on you with steel shoes or try to run back to the barn.
Then comes the ‘remount.’ This is how you get back on the bike in cross. You run a few steps while gripping the handlebars, then you jump onto the saddle. The idea is to land on the inside of your right thigh. You do not want to land directly on the saddle. It will hurt, much worse for one gender than the other.
But hey, I know how to vault up onto a horse. I volunteer to go first. I run a few steps, throw my leg up and over and pedal away. There’s no mane to grab but bikes don’t have withers, they don’t spook and they’re no more than 8hh tall. How hard can it be? At this point, I notice my clinic mates are hanging back, reluctant to throw a leg up and over. They run and keep running or take a sort of skippy step rather than hopping on with gusto. “You have to commit!” Aaron implores. I do a few more remounts, then decide I’ve got the hang of it and don’t need to keep pounding my inner thigh on the saddle. I have a race to ride tomorrow.
I watch the others, who don’t get it so easily. Someone needs to get them some games ponies to practice on. One poor guy scores a brutal direct hit and splits his shorts. “Wouldn’t you know,” he says. “It would have to be the $400 shorts.”
$400 bike shorts? Even in Canadian dollars, that’s about, well, $400. I ask how it is that bike shorts can cost $400. “They’re from Switzerland.” Oh, right. But it’s not like they’re made from handwoven cashmere cultivated from rare baby antelopes found only on the north face of the Eiger. We’re talking about black stretchy bike shorts, for god’s sake. I think I found mine in the sale bin for $30. They’re probably not from Switzerland but I doubt anyone can tell.
This is one of my first clues to a not-so-unique observation about cyclists: they like their equipment maybe even more than horse people like tack. During breaks in the action, everyone chatters about chain rings and gears and gadgets and bike shops and how many ounces it all weighs. I’m pleasantly ignorant, not knowing anything more complicated than ‘wheels’, ‘brakes’ and ‘handlebars.’ Someone points to my bike and says, “That one probably weighs around 30 pounds.” I lift it and nod. To me, it feels like ¾ of a bag of grain, which would be 30 lbs. It’s not that I don’t know weights, it’s just that I have different reference points.
And that’s about to change. Our next skill is ‘shouldering’ the bike. This is when you reach down and, in one smooth movement, crook your elbow through the frame and under the down tube while hoisting the bike up onto your shoulder. Then you reach for the inside branch of the handlebars to ‘control the bike.’ Someone gives it a try and whacks themselves in the back of the head with the saddle. “That’s why we wear helmets,” Aaron says. I’ve got bigger problems. The angled top tube of my mountain bike doesn’t accommodate my shoulder. And damn, my bike is really heavy to lift that high.
“Can I try it with your bike?” I ask Aaron. His bike is shiny, brand-new and, you guessed it, covered with logos. He nods and pushes it toward me. I stick my arm through the frame and lift. I have to do a visual check to make sure there’s actually a bike on my arm. This sleek, purpose-bred machine weighs next to nothing. “What is this, about 18 pounds?” I estimate. Aaron mulls it over. “A little less.” I could run a marathon with this bike on my shoulder. I could probably ride around Rolex with this bike on my shoulder. That is, if I could ride around Rolex. The bike is that light. I also notice that the underside of the top tube is flattened so it doesn’t dig painfully into your shoulder. My bike isn’t merely super-heavy, the top tube is an inverted, pointed triangle. Ouch. During the drills, I devise some alternative carries that don’t require shouldering, which come in handy when we have to carry our bikes up entire flights of stairs.
Meanwhile, Aaron has set up some practice barriers for us. Barriers are 1″ x 12″ wooden boards that are propped up on their sides to create an obstacle that you jump or step over with your bike. Apparently, good riders can bunny hop these things but when Aaron demonstrates, he takes a flyer from a long spot and crashes on landing. Another reminder that bikes and horses have something in common. We practice over a single barrier, then he sets up a second, just beyond it. On a horse, it would be a simple bounce. On foot with a bike on your back, it’s a bunch of choppy steps followed by a clumsy jump. Then we work on our bunny hopping over a nicely-worn curb. I’m not too worried about getting too airborne on my bike; however, I do occasionally miss my distance quite badly. How do you count strides on a bike?
It’s right around now that I hear the distinctive musical stylings of an ice cream truck. Would it be good form to showcase my new cross skills by chasing down the vehicle, dismounting, shouldering my bike right up to the window, then making a running remount with ice cream in hand? It’s a tempting thought but no one else seems to take any notice of the truck at all, nor of the second one that comes round a little while later. I’m starting to think cyclists just aren’t normal. What kind of people ignore the ice cream man at the park on a sunny day?
We move on to a different area to ride up and down a short, steep slope and make hairpin turns on the side of the hill. ‘Off-camber’ riding they call it. This is where I admit to a terrible habit of half-halting on steep descents on my bike. When going downhill on a horse, half-halts are your friend. You engage the hind end and get it back underneath you and suddenly, you’re the Man from Snowy River. Do this on a bike and you’re Evel Knievel at Snake River Canyon. Aaron explains that I need to rely mostly on my front brake and only engage the rear brake when the bike is straight.
As counter-intuitive as it feels, it leads to a light-bulb moment for me: it’s okay to let your bike go around on the forehand. Think of it as hunters and you’ll be fine. I practice until I’ve got reasonable confidence in myself not to squeeze the wrong brake lever. It really is much easier this way, although, as in the cross-country phase of eventing, you have to plan your lines in advance and ride them accurately every time. I ask Aaron how many times he rides the course before a race. “A lot.” The technical sections, he says, you ride over and over until you know exactly where you want to go, and then you have a back-up plan for when that line just isn’t available to you. This all sounds quite familiar to me. I hope I remember to do it tomorrow.
Our last activity is a riotous game of tag in a quasi-wooded area. I take full advantage of my mountain bike capabilities by pedaling furiously and blindly into the brush and trees when anyone comes after me. I only crash once. My legs, however, catch lots of thorns courtesy of BC’s ubiquitous berry bushes. I also get a bee in my bonnet. Literally. I take off my helmet and it buzzes back to freedom. Then Aaron calls us in. We’re done for the day.
After five hours of jumping on and off my leaden bike and carting it all over the park, I’m so tired I can barely put it up onto the rack. And I’m really, really hungry. Where’d that ice cream man go?
