Oil, Summer’s Ice

With the accuracy of a laser pointer Jaden stuck a finger out along his left leg.  Averting a flat on a raised crack, the group flowed to the right along the gutter.  A few miles later, somewhere near the former home of Big Butter Jesus, Rachel shook her hand on her right side.  Deep gravel.  It was an 80 mile ride and I’m sure we exhausted every gesture in the group ride hand vocabulary handbook. 

Big Butter at Solid Rock Church

There’s a sign for everything: a sweep of a right hand behind the back for a parked car, a quick double finger off the hoods says “hi” to a passing rider, a finger moved forward and backward spells out crack in the road, two fingers spread out at the ground usually means double pot holes or a pair of raised gas main covers.  A finger pointed and twirled in a circle at your helmet means the rider in front of you is an idiot.  For the few instances where a hand gesture won’t do, there are a few verbal-only warnings, like “car back, passing, car up, ice and low branch.”  Unfortunately for Don, there’s nothing in the cycling vocabulary for oil slick.

On rides we keep an eye out for the obstacles that could cause a crash or a flat and point only those out to our companions: glass, a topless sunbather, a cake-pan deep sewer cover, a raised metal plate, a pothole filled with water.  Other than that, hands belong on the bars and mouths are for breathing.  Being more of a listener than a talker, the silence of cycling is one of my favorite aspects of the sport.  In probably 15 years of cycling, from crack-fast Kentucky farm dogs to hand-carved riverfront cobblestones, you’d think I’ve pointed at it all.  I’ve never thought to look for oil on the road, in a corner, on a slight downhill.  Oil is like summer’s ice and Don went drifting.

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It was your typical 4 way intersection with a light.  Approaching slightly downhill, we had the green for a right hand turn.  There were six of us probably traveling north of 23mph.  Riding 3^rd wheel, I followed the two leaders on the inside to outside line.  By the time Don rolled through, he was at the mercy of two factors: looking through the turn and having the added man-momentum of gravity. 

Like us, Don never even saw the last 10 meters of the road before the turn.  Like the veteran cyclist he is, he saw the green light and then his eyes watched the exit of the turn.  Having at least 40 pounds on the women in front of him, he brought more speed to the corner and swung a bit wider to avoid touching wheels.  Schoop!  There it was.  I heard the metal pedal scrap the ground and turned to see Don laying in the road at the corner of the intersection.  While the first three of us skated past on the oil’s inside, Don crossed the slick like angled railroad tracks in the rain.

As Don dusted himself off, flexing the pain out of his hand, I futzed with his bike.  I put the chain in a smaller gear, spun his wheels testing for trueness and saw it.  A 10 inch section of his rear Conti 4000 was covered in thick oil.  I looked at the road.  The slick was thick, as if every car for the past 10 years had leaked oil waiting at the light.  If we had a ruler the depth was probably measurable to a 2-3mm.  Still, none of us saw it.  How could we?  It was black ice.

Aside from plumping like a Ballpark Frank overnight, Don’s hand turned out okay.  He blamed the miserable first three holes on his crash, but still managed to stay within his handicap on the golf course the next day.

CX Obstacle Theory: Tipping With A Winning Lotto Ticket

The drum line banged out a University of Wisconsin caliber halftime show around the sandpit at OVCX #10 at Cincinnati’s Gun Club course.  At the start of the Elite race, it was nuts to butts as spectators lined the route along the barriers.  The cowbells hurt my ears.  Like waiting for the inevitable NASCAR 3 laps to go red flag restart wreck, quite a crowd gathered around the creek crossing to heckle and snicker at those that dabbed.  As a racer who’s been around the cross block, those weren’t the hard parts of the course.  Those weren’t the parts of the course that a racer really needed to think about when scouting the course in warm-up.  Get ready, cuz I’m about to slip a roofie in your water bottle and blow your CX mind.

A few years ago, my mind was blown.  I remember pre-riding the course behind teammate and Ohio Valley fast guy Phil Noble.  Phil has this great ability to find those little snippets of the course where you could gain an extra pedal stroke on hard ground.  At Gun Club, the little patch of pavement coming out of the U-Turn by the grill was a great example.   You’re saying, “I know exactly what you’re talking about Joe Biker!  You could totally get 2 big pedals strokes in there to bomb the gravel decent.”  Yes!  Yes!  No.  No.  You don’t get it.  Ya see, what I learned that day from Phil, while as big of a revelation as mayonnaise on French fries, was just a small tip to the valet.  It was a glimpse of something bigger.  I’m about to lay a “Get Him To The Greek” furry-wall mind blowing on ya.  I’m leaving the winning lotto ticket for the waitress.

What've you been doing since like freaking August?  Intervals!  Yes.  We’ve all been doing intervals since late August, because uh…well…that’s what idiots like us do to train for cyclocross.  You gotta do intervals.  Hill repeats.  Lactate threshold.  85%!  It’s all about the intervals, being the Duke of Devou Park, Master of Mt. Adams.  8 minute intervals.  3 minute intervals.  30 on, 30 off x4, 3 sets. 

The thing is, no one is doing sandpit repeats.  No one’s doing LT intervals through a creek crossing.  You’re certainly not doing 10 second intervals through the barriers.  The sandpit, barriers, run ups and creek crossings are just there to confuse you.  Shut up legs?  No.  Shut up brain.  If you’re easing up on the straightaways and catching your breath through soft corners, you’re doing cyclocross backwards.

Think about where doing two and three minute donkey wheezing snot driveling lactate threshold intervals would’ve paid off at Gun Club.  Through the start and finish area straightaways?  Yes.  After the little single barrier run-up and into the soft cornered out and back section of the course?  Yes.  Headed up to the bridge?  Yes.  After the big “run-up?”  Ding!  Ding!  Ding!  There’s your 2 minute intervals.  There’s your 30 on and 30 off.  Those are precisely the sections of the course where you should be burning your matches.

(GUN CLUB WARM-UP COURTESY PETER HILLS)

Next time when you scout a course, look at it in relation to your training, your intervals, where you’re going to go all out, where you can recover.  What I learned from Phil wasn’t about where I could gain two pedal strokes.  It was about gaining the first two pedal strokes going into the real hard parts of the course, where I could open it up full gas.  Danish Nat'l Champ Joachim Parbo once said to a group at the Devou Park CX Clinic, it’s not about who gets through the barriers first.  It’s about who gets up to 25mph after the barriers first. 

At Gun Club, there wasn’t much ground to be gained between the sand pit and the single barrier run-up.  There weren’t gaps to be goosed on the hillside switchback, the creek crossing or the twists and turns that returned riders to the pit area.  The obstacles of a cx course are where having a lower heart rate and a clear head can prevail.  Obstacles mean recovery.  Getting on the gas sooner out of obstacles and holding onto that speed into the next recovery section is where gaps are created and wheels held.  Now go download some Dead on I-Tunes and get on the trainer.

It’s Not About The Barriers: Risk, Reward and the Cyclocross Course

The worst and the best cyclocross courses, I’ve raced them both. While you remember Cyclocross courses for certain features, the difference between a good and bad course rarely comes down to sand pits, log barriers, off cambers or cool hand built flyovers. The great courses offer risk and reward. (pictured above Masters racers take the risk of a fast entry into a 3 wide sand pit at OVCX Gun Club Race, 2008 Milford Ohio)

Cyclocross is much more than a fastest person wins bike race. It’s a mental game pitting skills versus speed. Some of the best courses I’ve raced tempt riders to make hard decisions throughout the course. The choice can be as simple as run it or ride it or as daunting as grabbing a handful of brake or blasting wide-freaking-open. At the OVCX Kingswood course this past weekend, a double barrier was followed by two 180 degree hairpins. Right off the bat, you’re thinking that sucks. It’s a total - everyone goes through slow and single file - choke point, but it wasn’t. The beautiful part of it was that you had to make the first hairpin a delicate fraction of a second after remounting from the barriers. The corner was taped wide. Some riders chose to run the first 180 the first lap and ride the turn on successive laps. Some opted for the longer but less susceptible to carnage outside line. Others tried their skills only to fumble getting clipped in through the turn. Multiple choice, but only one fast answer per lap. Brilliant.

One of my favorite risk/reward course set-ups was the natural double log barriers at the OVCX John Bryan race in 2008. The logs were a bunny-hop-able 10-12 inches thick, separated by a 10-12 yards of grass long enough to land and relaunch for the 2^nd log. However, the logs were on a fast straightaway, leaving riders to question whether it was faster to dismount at high speed and run, or slow to hop them. With conditions changing and fatigue setting in over the course of the race, it left a helmet scratching decision every lap. It rewarded strong riders with the skills to risk bunny hopping them every lap. It still rewarded those that could dismount at speed without touching the brakes. It punished those who committed beyond their talents. Now, mentally make those logs 16-18 inches round and roll them within 4-5 yards of each other. Unless you’re the one freak-of-nature in the race that can bunny hop anything, everyone is going to hit the brakes and run the logs. The risk and reward is gone. It wasn't about the logs, but how they were placed in relation to the course and each other.

Don’t get confused; risk/reward in Cyclocross has nothing do to with opening up a course or making it less challenging. It is about choices. Take the Green Monster flyover at the USGP course in Louisville in 2008. It was a behemoth wooden bridge structure with about 10 stairs on one side, a table top, and a ramp down the other. The stairs were tall and shallow. The table top wasn’t more than 2-3 feet longer than a bike. The steep ramp shot you out into a wide fast turn. The structure was wide enough for riders to tackle two abreast. It rewarded those with extremely quick dismount/remount skills combined with technical skills and punished those who hesitated for a split second of indecision or a case of nerves. More than once I saw it cause a gap between a rider with buttoned up skills and someone who had to look down to clip their foot in their pedal. Sure the Green Monster was challenging and an intimidating sight, but it was it's placement on the course that really made it spectacular. Had there been a tight turn at the bottom, riders would've played it a little more safe and never have attacked it as hard as they did.

Risk/reward, in regards to cyclocross courses not only applies to the obstacles, but the little nuances of the course. One of my favorites, while just a mosquito of a detail, is having a section of the course be a little pavement on one side and grass on the other. I’ve encountered this feature number of times and have learned to look for it in my pre-rides. Imagine a grassy stretch leading into a long sweeping corner. However, the corner slightly crosses a paved drive or golf cart path. Experienced riders will know that riding on pavement is faster than grass, so they’d take advantage to stand up and bang out a few hard pedal strokes on the pave. Others simply didn’t see the crumb of advantage right in front of their eyes. The risk: we all know what can happen going from wet grass to smooth pavement. Whoops!

My last example is about adding the element of speed to a course, particularly into and out of obstacles. When you put a tight turn in front of or after an obstacle, it forces all riders to stack and slow. Now replace those choking turns with a more direct or fluid route in and/or out of the obstacle. Riders that can really attack the obstacle at fearless speed are rewarded. Intimidated riders have to slow. The better all around cyclocrossers are rewarded, not the lucky ones who eek through the stacked up carnage.

Even though cyclocross is gaining immense popularity, the courses are still crafted by grass roots clubs and teams, not ex-pros or people that try to eek out a living on race promotion. It’s still September and a whole season is in front of us. When most design a course, they think: we need a sandpit, some off camber, a stretch of single track, some logs, some tight corners, a set of stairs, a little pavement, a nasty run-up and our logo on the barriers. Those are just elements, paint in the can. Tie those elements in a way that rewards riders who can take the risk and do it faster than the competition, now that makes a good course.