166: the grind

Inherently, this time of the year, the blog gets a little stale. I mean, cross training, how fucking interesting can that be? A bunch of geeks in Lycra riding around a soccer field. There's not a magnificent single track trail, with incredible views, and fast carving trails, or technical trails that when you finally clean them you feel like king of the world.

Cross is a bunch of folks turning themselves inside out all the while riding around a soccer field. The premise couldn't sound anything less exciting. I have heard the argument that cross is just an excuse to keep riding when it's too nasty to mountain bike, or too nasty to head out on the roads. I reject that. Cross is the season, and what I get geeked up for more than anything.

Cross is pure. Cross is cathartic. Like no other type of racing I have done, or trained for do I find myself looking into my soul and asking, how much faster can I push this. Short succinct efforts driving yourself deep into the pain cave. In preparation for mountain biking I could never convince myself to do what I easily cajole myself to do for cross.

Despite the mind numbing, drool inducing efforts and racing, a direct product of the intensity of the sport, I find myself thinking, scheming, planing my move the entire time. Being a bit of a hefty boy, I know I can't out climb the little guys, gotta attack in them in the open, I don't have as much power as the roadies, gotta attack them in the corners. As the laps wind down, the goal becomes how can I win this group? Can I beat everyone in a sprint? Do I need to do something before the final 200 m? The entire race, the entire effort there's always a dude or twenty just ahead of me that if I can come with one more burst I can get to, and another twenty dudes behind me thinking the same thing about me.

And while it might seem like training for cross, you know riding around a soccer field is the most horribly boring thing to do. In it's simplicity, in it's most basic form, this piece of training is so seductive, and so wonderful. Go out, go hard, go puke, go home. Screw the view, this about getting faster, suffering more on a bike. I, for one am not offended by that.

I am a simple man perhaps this is the part of cross I love most. This simplicity that fits into my sad somewhat bohemian way of life. I am not the brightest man, and perhaps the pure routine of cross racing keeps me coming. I read somewhere that, "consistency is the hobgoblin on little minds..."

The grind. The season. The routine. I love it.

Perhaps the single greatest advantage offered by the Delaware Cyclocross Coalition of Delaware is that while many are left to suffer and train in solitude, we pull together with a pretty tight knit group, go out and drill ourselves, pushing harder than you do in a race at times, and then turn around eat a plate of fish tacos, and talk shit about what went down at practice.

The practice is so good, that there have been years when I didn't toe the line at a cross race, but I didn't miss practice either. Like the jam car on your slot car racing track, I faticus was always in the middle of the effort where I probably should have been. It's that great. It's that much fun. We now have a jam car that wears a championship jersey. Yeah boy!

So in advance, I apologize for the next three months, if my stories are repetitious, or don't have the normal level of jackass that the rest of the year has. It's not that I'm not having fun, it's that I'm busy racing, resting, training, and racing again. I live for this stuff. Yes, I'm rambling, I have a belly full of fish tacos and beer. It probably all makes sense now.

18 days until the opener...

Viva La Cyclocross

Viva La C3-Sollay.com

Viva La Delaware Cyclocross Coalition of Delaware.

respect.

faticus