320 – Beach Party

This morning, I made the pleasant drive to Alum Creek State Park, host of Cap City Cross #7, dubbed the “Beach Party.” The race was to take place along and around the beach on the south side of Alum Creek Lake, and promised to be equal parts sandy slogfest, fast straightaways and off-camber mayhem.

I’ve been looking forward to this race every day, since my cyclocross baptism by fire at John Bryan with the OVCX series. I got my clock cleaned that day, but for whatever reason (or maybe that was the reason), I wanted more, pronto. I’ve been practicing with varying degrees of success on the CX course at JB in the weeks since, but what I really wanted was to grid up and have another go, and see if I could do better than next-to-last.

I pulled into the parking lot at Alum Creek a little under an hour before my race was to start. Usually that’s plenty of time to get ready, and I thought that it was, until I got out and took my sighting lap of the course. I was immediately concerned that the best tool for the job might not be my CX bike, but my mountain bike! Far different from the courses I’ve raced at Darree Fields and John Bryan, this race had a huge variation of surfaces and conditions, many of them bumpy, rooty and muddy enough to make me wish for some suspension. Unfortunately, by the time I had registered, kitted up and taken my practice lap, there were only 10 minutes left until the race start, so I made the call to stick with the ‘cross bike and hope for the best.

The intriguing thing about cyclocross as a discipline is that it’s never quite the same. Every course is different, and race organizers will frequently rearrange courses held at the same venue, just to change it up. Then there are the variables of weather, which can change everything about the race. Even the time of day that your race falls, and how many races have preceded it, can have a  huge impact on the course conditions and your accompanying strategy. As much as cyclocross rewards fitness and bike handling, there are many elements of strategy that can make or break your race, as well.

One of the most obvious bits of that strategy is how to approach the obstacles. There are some, like stairs and ride-ups, that intentionally require dismounts. Others, like deep mud, ruts, sand or logovers, rely on the rider to decide if it is more expedient to try and ride over, risking a crash, or dismount and hoof it for a few yards.

The course at Alum Creek presented several of those, including some sand sections on the beach, a couple man-made obstacles directly after, and a huge, muddy rut about half way through the lap. On my sighting lap, I noticed a lot of riders standing around the rut, or rolling their bikes through it while dismounted, trying to figure out if it was passable. I looked at it while I was riding up and knew what I was looking at, which is something of a first, for me. To the right were huge rocks, and the left was already churned up and slick from so many riders trying to go around. So I picked a spot in the middle and just plowed right through, letting my momentum carry me through the mud and over the lip on the other side.

That’s a strategy I’ve employed on a lot of rides this year on the mountain bike, and it rarely lets me down. If you’re looking to get through mud, aim for the middle, where it’s likely to be level and more compressed than around the sides. Go in fast, keep your weight off the front wheel, and just hold on, and you’ll make it though. At least most of the time. You might be muddy and wet once you make it, but less than you would be if you try to go around the side and crash!

It was encouraging to know that at least some of my mountain bike skills can transfer over to cyclocross, and that helped with the decision to stick to my Airborne Delta for the race. I rolled up to the starting grid for the Men’s Cat 4/5 heat feeling loose and confident of a better showing than I had turned in at JB. There were no call-ups, so I gridded myself conservatively, not wanting to hold up any of the series regulars, and waited for the start.

After some brief instructions, the marshal walked to the back of the 34-rider grid, calling “30 SECONDS.” Next we heard the whistle, 34 shoes clicked into pedals like a mechanical round of applause, and we were off! Wave starts are always exciting, and I found myself grinning as we all barreled down the road toward the grass, and the first turn.

The opening corners were far less congested than at John Bryan, owing partly to the smaller field, but mostly to the longer start chute and wider first few corners. I had intentionally let myself slip back a few positions in the starting run, but now found myself getting held up by a couple riders as the course climbed up some doubletrack, away from the beach. It was time to start making some moves! I found a hole as the course reversed on itself and poured on the gas, passing three riders before cresting the rise.

That felt good. Real good. I’m accustomed to passing people in running events, but my only attempts at cyclocross to date have involved a lot of me riding along by myself. This felt like racing, and I liked it! I kept the hammer down as we exited the woods and wound through a grassy section, toward some off-camber switchbacks that sent us all into our climbing gears. I was determined to keep the riders behind me, behind me! We slugged through a little mud and a lot of wet, bumpy grass before slamming across an impromptu bridge made of a wooden pallet and some rugs, then headed down the hill to the already-infamous muddy rut.

I eased up on the pedals a touch as I rolled down the hill, watching the riders ahead of me dismount and jog around the hole. I got lined up, stood on the pedals, and hoped that it hadn’t gotten too much worse since my practice lap! But my strategy worked, and I blasted through the rut, sending muddy water everywhere, and delighting the nearby photographer and spectators. Best yet, I passed all those guys who had dismounted and were now running with their bikes, trying to remount and climb the hill! My extra momentum from staying on the bike helped me get to the top without much trouble, and I was grinning, as my chest heaved and my legs dripped with mud, as we turned left, onto a brief gravel section.

Did I mention this course had everything?

A winding gravel road brought us to the beach portion of the lap, and I was again thankful for my experience on the mountain bike. I had a chance to ride some very sandy trails in North Carolina last year, with sections that were so deep that my front tire sank in and just stopped. This wasn’t nearly so bad, but it was loose enough that the turns were sketchy. A lot of riders fell on the second left turn, as the sand had been so rutted and churned up that staying upright required as much luck as skill. I took a wide line, intentionally missing the apex but staying out of the loosest portion of sand.

The beach section emptied into a muddy section, and I was reduced to slogging through in my granny gear. I looked back as I rounded a turn and saw two riders behind me, gaining ground as I was slowed in the muck. A bermed corner turned me back toward the start/finish, before which there were two obstacles, just low enough that hopping them was a tempting thought! But I was taking enough chances each lap, and my hopping skills are sub-par, so I dismounted and ran across the barriers, taking a flying leap back into the saddle on the other side.

A longish grassy section led from the start/finish to the doubletrack for another lap, and it was soft and bumpy such that it sapped your speed and energy. It was one of those sections that messes with you, because there’s not a visual cue as to why you’re working so hard, but your lungs don’t lie! I was relieved to finally get back into the woods, onto the relative ease of mud and gravel, and build some speed again!

I passed one more rider as we climbed through the woods, and kept the hammer down again to cement the pass. There was one more rider I could see ahead of me, and I hoped to be able to reel him in, though he had a couple hundred yards on me, still. A rider I hadn’t seen before came past me and quickly cleared off, perhaps the victim of an early crash that left me ahead of him when I otherwise wouldn’t have been.

Once more we rattled across the bridge and I slammed through the muddy rut, noticing that the far edge had gotten sharper as the race wore on. I only hoped it would be good enough for one more attempt! I was gaining ground on the rider ahead of me, but I couldn’t tell by how much. Up the hill, down the gravel road and back to the sand, and I tried a different line through the beach, looking for a way that wasn’t so slow. Nothing doing.

I trotted over the barriers and rode past the start/finish line, glancing ahead and then over my shoulder to figure out my place in my part of the race. I was still inching up on the rider ahead of me, but hadn’t put any distance between myself and the rider behind since my initial pass. The cowbells rang and the board indicated this would be the last lap, so it was time to go all-in!

I felt like I was getting faster with every lap, negotiating each section more confidently and putting more trust in the bike to do its job. I gave it all I had on that last lap, trying to really hit the areas that I had found myself to be faster than other riders, and find faster lines through the parts where I wasn’t. The last lap was cat-and-mouse, the three of us in a loose chain, reeling in and being reeled in, in turn. By the time we reached the beach again, I was nearly spent, but had put in just enough to insulate myself from attack by the rider chasing me. Unfortunately, so had the rider ahead of me, we finished the lap in the same order we had started it.

In the final tally, I finished 27th of 34 finishers in my race, which doesn’t seem like anything to be excited about. But after being left for dead in my last race at John Bryan, I couldn’t be more pleased with the result! I got to race with other riders, didn’t get left, rode strong and had a blast. As icing on the cake, a comparison lap later in the morning on my mountain bike revealed that I even made the right choice in equipment. My full-suspension rig was simply too heavy to be any faster, even if it was more comfortable and sure-footed over the bumps and roots.

I’m really hoping I’ll have another chance to race cyclocross before the season winds up. I’m in that puppy love phase where I get better at it every time I go out, and that sort of progress gets addicting, fast. But if I can’t make another round before winter closes in, I’ll be happy to finish on a positive note, and roll into 2014 ready for more!

(Photos courtesy Susan Hackett and Rick Jordon. Thanks you guys!)