Fall Is Where It's At

Fall has become my favorite time of year. I used to be a huge fan of summer. It had everything that was good and lacked some of the bad things, namely school. It was three blissful months of fishing on the river, riding my bikes off of dirt jumps with my friends and watching taped episodes of Saturday Night Live, the good years, with Mike Meyers, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock and co.

I held to my love of summer idea well into my adult years, then I realized one day that summer didn’t give me much benefit beyond extra daylight, I still had to work all day, so I decided to consider other seasons. I’d always been fond of Spring as it signaled the end of Winter. It's been forever since I had time and money for skiing so Winter gets pretty old by the end of January. Spring, still was too cold, what with the Lion-ish March winds, and all those April showers.

One day, mountain biking on a crisp Fall Saturday morning it hit me, I love Fall. I added it up, cooler temperatures, check, full sports schedule on TV, check, and the overwhelming reason to love Fall is Cyclocross.

At times the thoughts of Cyclocross are so full in my mind that I begin to smell embrocation, then quickly worry that the kids must have gotten into the embrocation. A quick check revealed that they were safe from stinging their eyes with the potent oils of Fall bike racing.

Last year was my first real year for Cyclocross and to make sure I was properly initiated mother nature sent a drizzly rain storm on Saturday morning, making the ‘cross course nice and muddy. I was in love.

I was rather late to the race, didn’t have time to warm up my muscles then quickly wondered what in the world I had gotten myself into. It was cold and rainy, I hadn’t done much training, and I had entered a bike race. You see I’ve never been competitive, in high school I watched my friends compete in sports and the rough and tumble, highly competitive, singing competitions, but except for some church basketball had never really had the competitor fires burning in me. Now here I was, early 30’s and it was so cold I couldn’t bring myself to take my hoody off(a big cycling fashion no no) to freeze in the rain. So I rode down the hill to the start line, put myself in the back of the pack and then proceeded to get left in the dust by the pack of 50 newbie racers. Once I got up the hill (I hate hills) and caught my breath, I started to have some fun. The downhills were great, sliding around in the mud was fun. I didn’t even mind that I was getting passed by girls on the hills. I was quite glad to get lapped at the end of the second to last lap. The thing about cyclocross is, if you get lapped, you’re done. Though it’s a tad demoralizing, if you’re slow enough that you’ve gotten lapped you’re usually happy to be done.

Now here I sit with another cyclocross season about to begin. My heart beats faster with every day we get closer to October. I realize I didn’t come close to doing any of the training I was going to do all year and I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than get muddy on my bike. Hopefully I don’t get lapped this year…sandbaggers.