Cyclocross practice – I might just get cut from the team...

Ok, so today oldest Mini Team BRAZO and I attended our first Cyclocross practice in Madison. We got to the course (which happened to be the same course that oldest Mini Team BRAZO had run his x-country race on Saturday) and began to ride around. Oldest Mini Team BRAZO had noticed during his run on Saturday that there where “boards” in the weeds along the course. So, we figured that these must be the “walls” that you dis-mount your bike and carry the bike over. We set up a few of these walls and began practicing getting ourselves and the bikes over the walls. For the most part, it really wasn’t that hard – just a matter of getting faster.

About 30 minutes later, the rest of the practice team showed up for the practice. They went around the rest of the course and setup more of those “walls”. I noticed right away that there were some differences between the rest of the “team” and myself.

The rest of the team had nice cyclocross bikes – I did not (I didn’t hear anyone laughing at my 1992 Fuji Sand Blaster, but that may be just my hearing going bad with the old age). The rest of the team had clips on the bottom of their bike shoes – I had Kayano’s. The rest of the team was decked out in full biking clothes – I wore some tri-shorts and a normal shirt. The rest of the team looked like they knew what they were doing – I did not.

The team leader decides that tonight we would ride the course backwards to practice our “right turns” – not sure what that meant, but what the heck – I didn’t know what it felt like to do the course not “backwards”. We begin racing around this grass course with walls lined up every once in a while. Oldes Mini Team BRAZO and I stay in the back of the pack for the first part of the course and then pass a few people that amazingly had fewer skills then us (or they just wanted us to feel better). I noticed that the more we went around, the harder those little walls were to get over. I thought I might get to a point that I would need to take off the front wheel of the bike to make it lighter, then next the seat, and so on – then re-assemble the bike on the other side of the wall -- it was much harder with the quads burning up.

Overall, it was a great time. My quads were a bit buzzing by the time that I had completed 2 laps of the course. The rest of the team planned on completing 5 laps of the course (and then do something else), well thankfully oldest Mini Team BRAZO had homework to do – so we headed out after 2 laps.

Thankfully, we will be on vacation for next weeks practice – so I shouldn’t be cut from the team for at least 2 more weeks….