Feeling quite 'cross

I guess it’s only natural that after age 50, there are times in your life you want to try something new.

I’ve been racing bicycles — road racing, like those guys in the Tour de France — for more than three years now, and after a ho-hum season, I still had some competitive desire that I needed to use up before winter set in. I’d been turning down requests by teammates to join them in training for cyclocross for the last couple of years, and I guess I just felt like this is the now-or-never year to give it a shot.

Unlike road racing, cyclocross demands some pretty disciplined bike handling skills, and when I caught wind of a new track being built in Coeur d’Alene, I jumped at the chance to volunteer and see just what it takes to design and build something of that magnitude.

It took more than two months of steady work by myself and many other volunteers under the tutelage of veteran course designer and racing legend Mike Gaertner, but the Coeur d’Alene cyclocross course was deemed ready for use well over a month ago, and since then I have had the privilege of helping break the course in. I’d run laps at least four days a week, trying to get my body and soul in shape, and to develop the balance needed to compete.

The course measures almost exactly 2 miles in length, and I slowly whittled my lap times down as I developed confidence in moving through the twisty, treed sections, the fast gravel and dirt sections, the sidehill descents and the run-ups, which require you to dismount when you run out of steam, swing the bike onto your shoulder and hoof it to the top before remounting.

Finally, after endless hours and laps, it was race day. Since this was just my first year in the sport, I decided to use my 27-year-old mountain bike (the Inland Northwest Cyclocross Series has a class specifically for mountain bikes).

So there I was last Sunday, front tire on the starting line, anxious to get a crack at the course in competition.

After some brief instructions, the starter said, “OK, everybody ready? Then head on out!”

I mashed down with my left foot, firmly clicked into its pedal, and after a revolution or two I clicked in with my right foot as well. I’d lost a little ground to the leader but I was closing in when we got to a switchback after the first straightaway, and we had to dismount and jump a couple barriers before hopping back on. I noticed at that point I was in second place, and the leader was riding a late-model, lightweight mountain bike (probably weighing less than half my bike), with knobby tires that had much more traction than the ones I had chosen. I had picked my tires to maximize my speed on the straightaways, since my ancient bike weighed in at over 40 pounds. I knew going in that my margin for error was virtually nil, running such a heavy bike. Other competitors in the class were riding bikes that easily weighed less than half as much.

The tread on my tires was inverted, giving me some traction in the corners, and as long as I kept my weight off the front tire in the turns, I kept the bike upright in practice and I thought I had a decent chance of laying down some fairly fast laps in the race.

•••

I somehow dug down deep enough to close ground on the race leader, and caught him on a hairpin turn, which leads to a tricky sidehill descent. We both managed to negotiate the turn and stayed upright to the bottom, with me trying to apply some pressure to see if he’d make a mistake and I could slip by and gain the lead.

We approached the run-up hill, and we both got off and shouldered our bikes in an efficient manner, and I was able to stay within striking distance as we remounted and took off down a steep hill and pedaled through two long straightaways. I struggled to match his speed, but I was determined to stay close and keep the pressure on him to manage the course and fight off my advances in the process.

We came to a quick, steep, hilly section and I yelled, “You need some speed to get up here!,” as I knew that if he didn’t make the hill, he’d block the narrow single track and I’d have to stop as well. He struggled up the hill, but we both got up without putting a foot down, and after a few more tricky sections, with me right on his tail, we came to a very technical, treed section of the course.

He navigated the first portion in a pretty efficient fashion, but we came to a hairpin that then drops down to a gravel road, and he carried just a little bit too much speed and got out of the groove on the downhill part, providing me the opportunity I was hoping for to take the lead.

We drag-raced down the short straight, and I surged ahead as we turned back into the trees. At this point I tried to put the hammer down, trying to stretch the lead as much as possible while keeping myself upright. I also wanted to get away from him, so I didn’t have to show him the line and my form, since it is an advantage to follow someone who knows the course.

I flew out of the treed section and barreled down the straightaway and across the start/finish line to start the second lap. I took a quick look under my armpit, and saw the former race leader (who I later learned was the series leader as well, Kurt Friederich) was a good 300 feet behind, so I made it my goal to at least maintain that gap through the next lap.

All of a sudden it hit me: Here I am, leading in my first cyclocross race. When I started road racing, I don’t think I smelled the lead of a race for most of my first season, and was usually nowhere near the front at the end.

Just like most other sports, focus is of paramount importance in cyclocross racing. Lose focus, get distracted thinking about things other than the task at hand, and bad things will eventually happen, guaranteed.

I made it through the sections where I first applied pressure to Kurt on the first lap, and after the run-up, I got back on the bike and made my first boo-boo: I couldn’t get my right foot clipped back in its pedal. I headed down the steep hill, just trying to hold on, then tried again — no luck, and finally I had to quit pedaling altogether and really concentrate on locating my foot correctly. I then heard the “click” and I started mashing, knowing I’d lost quite a bit of ground.

I got to the end of the first straight and the road switches back, so I was able to locate Kurt as I pedaled back up to speed. He was closing in, and my lead was probably less than 100 feet. I flew up the hill I had previously yelled at, and sprinted to the next treed section, a tricky part where the single track narrowly winds its way through ponderosa pines, then a quick downhill leads you through some flat turns with groundcover to navigate.

Now I had probably rode through that section nearly a hundred times in the past, but this morning was chilly, and the frost had not yet met the sun, so missing the line by mere inches could have serious consequences. And it did.

Still trying to gain every second I could on the competition, I hit the downhill hard and started to turn, and I felt the front tire slip a little. I tried to save it, overcorrecting and sliding to a halt on my right side, my right foot still clipped in.

I got the bike off me, unclipped and stood up. As with any bike crash, you want to assess your body first, and I felt fine — just a little embarrassed. I noticed the chain had come off my front cog, so I reached down and swung it back on. I hand-cranked the pedal a revolution to ensure it was ready to go, and in the course of doing so I wound some of the groundcover vines into my rear derailleur and cassette. Now I had a problem. What should have been a 10-second loss of time would now be at least a half minute.

Kurt came pedaling past as I went to work pulling vines off the back of my bike. I cleared it all quickly, and with the adrenaline surging, I headed off in pursuit.

The course switches back on itself multiple times, so it was pretty easy to get an accurate read of how far ahead he was. I knew to have any chance of winning, I’d need to run some near-perfect laps and hope that he made a costly, time-sapping mistake of his own.

I cleared the tree section on lap 2, and sprinting down the frontstretch, I could see Kurt was at least 200 yards ahead. Instead of being a letdown, this inspired me to buckle down and focus on closing the gap in the next lap. The only problem with this plan was that now Kurt had two laps on the course under his belt, and odds were he had already run his slowest laps of the race, meaning I had to run my fastest laps by far to gain ground and put some pressure back on him.

I divided my time between focusing on the course, trying to hit my marks, and locating him to determine if I was making any headway. Anytime we got near each other on a switchback, I made sure he saw me in “full speed ahead” mode, just to make sure he knew I hadn’t given up catching him.

I laid down what I thought was my best and fastest lap ever, and I could see that as he hit the start/finish line to begin his last lap, I’d made up some distance (now the lead was less than 100 yards), but would my pace be enough to ensure two guys would be sprinting for the win?

•••

Now I was close enough to keep an eye on Kurt’s progress, while also trying to do all I could to pull in closer.

When I hit the top of the downhill switchback, I didn’t brake quite as much as I had been, hoping I could just lean into the turn and miraculously pull myself upright and down the jagged trail and make up some distance. It was a good, desperate plan.

Unfortunately, I overshot the trail, and ended up on the slick hillside, and I probably lost a few seconds trying to pedal back onto the trail. I flew down the hill, around the turns and hoped that when I came to the run-up, Kurt would be somewhere in sight. No such luck.

I ran up the hill, remounted took the downhill with reckless abandon. Still Kurt’s image wasn’t on my radar.

I entered the trees section, at this point hoping the cycling gods might smile upon me, and at some point Kurt would be trailside, or at least moving slower that he had been.

Finally I saw him on a switchback, and apparently he’d poured on the coals, because he was now flying and increasing his lead. It was at that point, with less than a couple of minutes racing until the finish line, I had to face the reality I’d be coming up short on my quest.

I made sure I didn’t stupidly run off the course in the remaining turns, and I still put in some effort to get to the line as quick as I could, but the cheers for second place never sound as good as the ones the winner receives.

I coasted back toward the pit area, and a fellow racer in another class wanted to chat about my antiquated bike. Apparently, he’d had one decades ago, and was impressed that I was using one in a race.

It was at that point that Kurt pulled up and joined in the conversation. He wanted to know what happened to me, and after I told him I made sure to offer my congratulations on a win well deserved.

After talking with a few teammates, I coasted back to the truck and took a few drags on the water bottle, followed by some protein in bar form.

There, resting on the tailgate of the truck, I had a moment to reflect on my first foray into the chaotic and addicting world of cyclocross racing. Interspersed between thoughts of doubt about my decisions during the race, I always came back to “Man, that was a blast.”

Many of the people I race with during the summer state that they are out there mostly “just to keep in shape for cyclocross season.” Up until that time on the tailgate, I guess I didn’t really believe them. But now, after experiencing the full-body (and full-mind) workout that is a cyclocross race, I can see where they’re coming from. Cyclocross racing isn’t near as stressful mentally as road racing, in which you are constantly defining and readjusting your strategy. You’re really battling the course instead of your competitors. Also cylocross racers tend to care less about their finishing position than just racing to have fun and doing their best.

And in the end, that is what I did in my first cyclocross race. I had fun. Sure, it sucked that I made an error and lost the lead, but in the end, the other 99 percent of the race was pure enjoyment.

So, with that in mind, next season I’ll be back road racing — but only to keep in shape for cyclocross (focusing on courses without groundcover).