Cyclocross huh?

“…cyclocross huh, Utah has enough things to do, you don't have to make things up.” This is what my brother-in-law said when I told him about cyclocross. You see, my wife and I are pretty active people and can be pretty random in what we do and say. My wife had been a bobsled pilot for America Samoa at one point and we tend to choose interesting paths to walk, so it may appear to some people that we’re somewhat strange in the careers and activities we choose to do.

After I had convinced my brother-in-law that I had not created some new, overly-difficult, sport, but had actually joined up with a sport that had a 100 year history, he seemed somewhat interested. He’s not really one to question someone’s choices as he spent a few years of his life following the Grateful Dead and Phish around the country. I get odd looks in the Fall and Winter whenever someone asks me what I’m doing that weekend and I tell them I’m riding in a bike race. I get an even stranger look when I have to explain to them exactly what cyclocross is.

I’m not exactly sure what made me want to start racing cyclocross or even how I first learned about it. I’m a curious person by nature, Google and I are best friends because anything I think of or hear about I check on Google and catalogue in my brain. I’ve been mountain biking for a number of years and a few years ago I realized I kept reading references to cyclocross and I always assumed it was some type of mountain bike race, probably because I read about it on MTB websites or magazines. At some point I realized that I should probably find out what this “cyclocross” was since I kept reading references to it and didn’t want to be left in the dark. What I read amazed me. This sounded like the oddest sport in the world. At first I thought it sounded pretty stupid. For one thing it was done on what appeared to be modified road bikes. I’m an admitted adrenaline junky so endurance sports don’t really interest me.

Road cycling just looked tedious and boring. Riding a road bike off road seemed like using the wrong tool for the job, like using a hack saw to cut down a tree, yeah you can do it, but there are much better ways to get the job done. But, being the curious person I was I kept reading and learning. I watched some YouTube videos and

looked at some pictures and before I knew it I was greatly intrigued. There happened to be one more race left in the Utah Cyclocross series that year and so I informed my wife that I’d be driving to Ogden to watch the race that Saturday. Being a triathlete and a cyclist she thought it sounded fun so she sent me on my way. I got to the race course which was covered by 6 inches of fresh snow and proceeded to watch a group of guys gut it out for 45 minutes through snow that quickly turned to thick mud. When they got done they all had a thick coat of mud on their faces. This cyclocross stuff looked really hard but I knew I just had to try it the next year.

Several years later and my wife, I’m sure, gets sick of hearing me talk nonstop about ‘cross. Luckily for me, we have a compromise, of sorts, worked out. She gets most of the rest of the year for her sports. Most of Winter is spent snowshoeing and triathlon base training, Spring is triathlon base training and races, and Summer is Triathlon races. Fall is all mine… at least for now, until she learns how awesome cyclocross is and wants to do it herself.