My mindset that I was fit and only needed to tune up my cross biking skills was a nice fantasy that abruptly ended when I got my butt kicked (really bad) in that first eye-opening event. The real truth was that endurance training and cyclocross training have nothing in common except that both are done using a bicycle.
So there I was with no ability to power out repeated max intensity efforts over an hour...and when I say max intensity I mean breathing-hard-almost-puking-seeing-stars-maximum-output and when you're done you can hardly walk. That's part of what cyclocross is - the other part is riding a "road-type" bike off road with knobby tires in the dirt, mud, snow, or what ever at high speeds...it's fun in a dark, diabolical sort of way. Did I mention steep run-ups...
Barrier and water crossings...
I haven't had this much fun on a bike since I raced mountain bikes in the old WIM Series. Actually I think this is more fun, I'm hooked so bad that I think this will become a yearly torture focus for me.
Well after the reality set in, racing into shape all of the sudden sounded like a good plan, in part. The other part of my plan involved shorter high output rides at home vs. the long mediocre outputs I have been doing (aka: focused training vs. aimless riding). My original fantasy goal was to win a few of these events this year, however my reality goal (after my bubble was burst) was to produce some top-10 finishes by the end of the season and get out of the mid-pack finishes.
It seems that I have achieved that goal quite well so maybe I should aim a little higher now with the 2-races left. Hmmm, got mud?
By-the-way, I'm racing on a Single-Speed cyclocross bike against guys running an uncountable number of gears. In my opinion they're at a disadvantage with gears, but that is offset with my poor cyclocross fitness compared the those that are in the top-5 consistently.
Photo credits: Bryan MacDonald (thanks!).
