Weird as it may be, given that it was ninety degrees three days last week, Fall is officially here. I'm acutely aware of this because K-town, Campbell and I rode French Creek yesterday and the old growth forest there has experienced its first official leaf-drop. I'm no forest ecologist, but it seems to me that the leaves are dropping particularly early this year. Maybe it has something to do with the extremely dry weather we've had this summer. I don't know. Anyway we were there two weeks ago to the day and summer was at its peak. Lush, green, and dry as a bone. The soil was actually crunchy. It was ripping fast then, yesterday it was more or less sketch-tacular. Dusky due to the overcast skies, greasy and slick from the morning's rain fall, and it had that sickly sweet smell of decay that is the hallmark of fall in the woods. I've always thought that if you're going to ride French Creek wet, even though this is frowned upon by the trail maintainers, its better to ride it when its actually raining. Much like a road surface, the falling water washes away the grease. If you ride there within 12 hours after a rain fall or when its misting, like yesterday, its slick and super sketchy. Fun though.
Other evidence from the weekend that fall has, well, fallen was the first cross race of the 2010 season - Nittany Cross. We'll call this my first official cross race. Technically I participated in two cross races last year on a mountain bike that I converted to a "monster" crosser. Those races were fun, but while in theory and execution the monster cross bike was awesome, it proved to have no practical application whatsoever. It was heavy, slow, under-geared, and awkwardly fitted. Those two 2009 races were fun though so I purposed to try and put a "season" together (maybe seven races) in 2010 on an actual cross bike. When Nittany Cross was first posted on BikeReg I hadn't even ordered by cross bike yet. It showed up at my house the day the Nittany Cross BikeReg online registration closed, so I was almost the last one to sign up. In fact, out of 102 racers, given bib numbers 300-402, I got bib number 397. Yup, that's right, with no call-up, no previous cross experience or points, I lined up in what would become pretty much the back row at the start. My pre-race preparation was not what I would have liked it to be either . I built my cross bike two days prior to the race, rode it one time for 10 miles, and though I brought my road bike, stationary trainer, and a geared mountain bike as a pit bike fully expecting to sit on the trainer for an hour prior to the start like the cross-guys do, with all of my isht worked out, we didn't get to the race venue until 11:30AM. My race started at 12:00PM. Google maps took us to Trexlertown by way of Reading via Route 222 and we got lost. In the 15 years that I've been driving I don't think I've ever driven route 222 when construction was not going on. We pulled up in a frenzy, I chamoised up, registered, road around for five minutes and then seeing that the "corral" was filling up, lined up at the back given my 397 bib number. Needless to say not what I had planned.
A couple of other observations about my first cross race:
- Your fate seems to be more or less sealed right from the start - with a field that big on a twisting race course so small, a big portion of the race boils down to the start. In fact, I've bested the guy that won the B race several times on a mountain bike, but I couldn't even get a chance to hang and bang starting in the last row behind a slew of what would eventually become "pack fodder".
- Cross guys must mostly be roadies because they can't turn on the dirt at all. Seriously, from what I've seen, they suck at turning and at bike handling in general. They've got to be the worst bike handlers ever. People were falling everywhere and the ground was bone dry. I can't imagine what a fiasco it would have been had the grass/ground been wet or even dewy. It would have been pandemonium, shaved legs flailing about and torn skin-suits everywhere.
- From what I can see, cross has none of the respectful camaraderie, friendly competition, or "blue-collar" joviality that mountain biking offers. I've heard a lot about the cross "community", but aside from those crossers that I already know from the mountain biking scene, everyone I had dealings with at the raced struck me as uppity, 20 or 30 something, yuppie, hipster, douche-bags. I wasn't really surprised by this as riders from the cross-community have always struck me as being the "cool-kids" of cycling.
All that said, I can't wait to race again. I just need to get a pair of skinny jeans, dark rimmed glasses, some ink, a flannel shirt, and an air of smug self-importance before my next race.
I guess I did alright finishing 23rd out of 102 considering I started somewhere around 90th and fought through and around traffic the entire race. Hopefully I'll get a call-up at Granogue.
Doubtful,
Ronaldo
