this aint no picnic

Oh sandy

With two feel good rounds under our chamois, it was time to head to Irvine Beach for Joksijde. The Walkers Cycling race is now part of SCX folklore, it’s a course like no other and one that always delivers. I shouldn’t need to tell anyone reading this about the course but in case you need to, please refer to last years review of this race here or alternatively here. And like last year, I would reiterate the point, “yep, I could race that course every week”

Stevo in full flight and smiling (pic by the Press Room) 

After the balmy heat of the first two rounds we could be forgiven for speculating a lovely sunny day beside the seaside. Mother nature had other plans though and as the weekend got ever closer the weather warnings got ever more severe. Wind and cyclists have a peculiar relationship, it is very much like that slightly creepy, heavily fragranced aunty who demands a kiss at Christmas but then slips you a tenner when your mum isn’t looking. Today the wind was demanding a lot of kissing and in fact some heavy petting in a strictly one way relationship.

I’m getting into the earlier start of the V50 race, it gets it out the way and the courses are generally in better shape because they haven’t been hammered by all those fat V40’s. I did however get myself into a bit of a flap and it all became a mad rush for the line in the end. Now as we all know the start is a pretty crucial element of cross racing, you certainly don’t win from the start but you can very easily lose. Bizarrely it was announced that we would all start together (J/50/W) and if that wasn’t odd enough the gridded women were put in behind the gridded V50, this added another layer to getting a decent start and was a real blow for the un-gridded women more than the old blokes as they had to hustle for position amidst grumpy old men. The resulting start was messy, we all charged into the switchbacks and farcically attempted to find our place. I may have swore here and said some unpleasant things, I’m sorry if I offended anyone.

Ainsley, calm collecting some more points (pic by the Press Room) 

I love this course as I think I have mentioned on numerous occasions. The off camber sections, the big dipper, the sand, the bumpy lumpy singletrack, its got it all. Today it also had a brutal wind that tore away any rest you might have got on the descents and pummeled you with sand and sea at every opportunity. I tried to get into a rhythm but it was so fucking hard to keep momentum going at times that my head went up and down like a demented yoyo. After a couple of laps out on the furthest of the off camber section I thought I felt my rear tub roll, I pedaled on and looked down it seemed to be rolling fine, I then forgot all about it. A wee group had got together and it was hard to shake riders off with the weather, Billy McCord snuck past and pulled one of the Angus Bike Chain guys with him but they were still within clear sight for the duration of the race as I did battle with another couple of dudes, whose names I haven’t worked out yet.

Last lap and at that same place I got the squirm from the rear tub only this time it wrapped itself around the wheel and I ground to a halt, fuck fuck, fuckity fuck. I floundered around attempting to pry it back onto the rim, this was a big mistake as I wasted way too much time, I attempted to run it back but by now my legs were fried and my run resembled a death march, slowly riders of every age and shape passed me as I hauled myself to the pits, grabbed a bike and finished the last couple of hundred metres. I was disappointed I wont pretend.  In other news, first time crosser Campbell Hall managed to get round one of the toughest rounds in one piece which is mighty impressive, I think he may have got the bug. .

Steady does it for Addy (pic by the Press Room) 

A quick change and reloading of the car and I was out to watch the V40 cavalry charge, damn there are so many of them, I missed the start but can only imagine what it was like. Our guys seem to be doing battle mostly with each other in this category; we were missing Gavin May and Simon Muir who are usually the fastest of our 40’s so it was up to the rest. Everyone finished (except another first timer Bikelove Carl) and speculated the glory of the mid pack hustle.

No sooner had they finished than the seniors were off, another packed field and they were blessed with probably the worst of the weather.  Our seniors are having a great run this year and this race was no different, Stevo, Graeme, Ian, Addy, Simon, Steven and Gareth all turned up for this one and made there presence felt. Meanwhile at the front Rab Wardell was wondering what he was going to do to shake off Grant Fergusson who made a rare appearance. The answer was nothing, a season of racing at world level has certainly put a gap between Grant and his domestic rivals. He stepped up a gear and cruised his way around never looking particularly phased by the weather or the effort, a different class. By the end of the race Grant had lapped the entire field right up to 3^rd place! That third place was held by our own Steve Halsall who is having another great season as is Graeme Warren with another top ten finish, in fact all of our seniors are riding themselves inside out, mucho respect, 7 riders in this category, possibly the best represented club out there.

Irvine was over for another year and despite the weather I am already missing it. It goes without say, well done to Walkers Cycling.

How we doing.

Women

Maddy Robinson 3rd

Ainsley Turbitt 10th

V50

Colin Shearer 10th

Chris Duncan 18th

Campbell Hall 30th

V40

Martin Steele 45th

Davie Graham 46th

Russell Stout 48th

Fraser Waters 52nd

Chris Marquis 59th

Carl Lottering-Geeson dnf

Senior

Steve Halsall 3^rd

Graeme Warren 7^th

Gareth Jones 8^th

Addy Pope  16^th

Stevie Turbitt 18th

Ian Dunlop 19th

Simon Fairful 24th

creatures of the night

Hallocross

Lets open with a nice little snippet from the Jehovahs Witness website (www.jw.org)

"The Bible warns: "There must never be anyone among you who . . . consults with ghosts or spirits, or calls up the dead." While some view Halloween as harmless fun, the Bible indicates that the practises associated with it are not. The Bible says: "I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the lord and the cup of the demons too."

When I read this off the back of a web search about the origins of Halloween the penny dropped with the precision of the guillotine slicing off the head of naughty aristocrat who had been caught with his pants round his ankles at the foot of the queens bed. Within that little paragraph lies all the reasons I would want to dress myself in suitably stupid, dumb, scary (probably not) and unsuitable for cycling outfit, throw a leg over my cross bike, flick the switch on an overly bright light and race around a damp (but oh so warm) country park in the dead of night for an hour. Yes I do want to consult every last one of those ghosts and I want to embrace every ghoul and goddamn demon that’s ever wandered across my path. Because for one hour in October nothing else in the world really mattered, except the sheer beauty of riding bikes hard with smiles on our ungodly faces.

dumb, stupid, scary. pick any two (pic by Addy Pope)

First up well done to James for picking this event up when it needed someone to, there aren’t many occasions when bike racing is fun while you are doing it, sure afterwards as we dwell on our awesomness we realize maybe we do enjoy it but while we actually race it never usually feels that awesome. Cyclocross perhaps lends itself to the weird, for it is indeed a sport that lacks a lot of sense, a sport designed to punish and brutalise both rider and equipment, throw a bit of self humiliation into the mix and it almost makes more sense.

"When you're dead, you're dead. Thats it."
Marlene Dietrich

So on what was possibly the mildest Halloween evening on record over a hundred mostly suitably dressed and like-minded souls prepared to go into battle with the demons of the night? And battle we did, mass starts like this are a bit hair raising anyway, add into the mix unsuitable attire and darkness and the spicy cocktail is complete. We pedaled and cranked our way around the start loop, to start the race proper (did anyone else hit that hidden rock right on the race line before the swinging sponge section?) The pace as you would expect was frantic and the short but sweet lap made for some super fast racing, no let up at all with only a couple of muddy sections to give you any bother.

loved this section. (pic by Addy Pope)

By lap two I was feeling ok and riding in the mask wasn’t as bad as I had thought it was going to be but then I went to hop over the log, front wheel up, mask slipped over eyes, kerashhhh. I went down like a gravediggers sack when he hears a Bobbies whistle. In the few seconds between flying and hitting the deck it occurred to me I hadn’t crashed for quite some time, in fact this was the hardest I had hit the deck in ages but bounce I did. You can’t beat that adrenaline rush that you get from a crash. Elbow, hip and knee felt a bit sore but everything was working so back on the saddle I got and tried to compose myself as best as possible.

The laps seemed to keep coming until eventually there was a bell, nobody really wants to hear about my race that much so I wont bore you, big shouts to all who entered into the spirit of things, too may to mention but all winners in my opinion. And on that subject, anyone turning up to a Halloween CX race and rocking out in their team skinsuit, I’m sorry that’s a mighty fail and you have missed the point. There are plenty of opportunities throughout the year to keep it tight and ‘pro’ Hallocross is not one of those. If you cannot love the absurdity or the overwhelming positivity that this event encouraged then stay at home. We all need fun and Hallocross delivered. Until next year. . .

thankfully he put the mask back on shortly after this pic was taken (Jimmy Mac by Addy Pope)

how we did:

seniors
7th Ian Dunlop
14th Andy Wardman
20th Simon Fairfull
women
2nd Maddy Robinson
Vet40
10th Chris Marquis
15th Martin Steele
Vet50
2nd Colin Shearer
4th Chris Duncan

bandwagonesque

Ideas it could be said are the building block of progress, we all have them, good ones, weird ones, logical ones and expensive ones. Knowing which ones should blossom and which should be laid to rest on the back of a beermat is a skill. Most of the time we get it right, we never made that house from Play-Doh though we may have chose to eat less junk food. Bad ideas and good ideas, but we should never stop having them.

Cyclocross is enjoying something of a boom-time, finally the penny has dropped about its accessibility and dare I say it fun. You don’t need to be super fit to race for an hour in crappy conditions on a flattish course with some minor obstacles to spice it up and therein lies its charm. The popularity hasn’t happened by chance, over the last 6-8 years, racers and race organisers have been fine-tuning the formula, to maximize the appeal.

It’s hardly surprising then that event organisers are taking note and wanting to cut themselves a slice of CX pie and who can blame them? Event organising is one of those ‘occupations’ that seems quite ‘cool’ or even ‘glamorous’ but in reality is a pain in the arse. A lot of mindlessly boring work for possibly a little return that seldom justifies the effort in the first place. But always think of those happy smiling faces at the end of the day, how can you put a price on that? So when a seemingly simple format comes along, then you would want to throw your expertise at it, right?

Cyclocross is a bit of a sporting oddity, born out of necessity and now a discipline in itself. From its inception it was designed to keep racers racing through the winter. Whilst it was possible to keep training through the winter, keeping the legs fast wasn’t so easy. Cyclocross came along as a way to retain that speed in racers legs over a course that encouraged acceleration and deceleration over varied terrain, kinda like a criterium with mixed terrain, ultimately a device to keep legs frisky. Now we all know that Cyclocross has changed since its inception but the fundamentals remain, fast and furious, it’s that relentless speeding and slowing that makes the sport the success that is it. And so to the root of this rant. . . .

Cross the Bridge

This event happened last weekend and was a first for Inverness, which is great. The northern outpost has long had a very healthy cycle scene but alarmingly this is its first ever CX race. The course was built around a steep piece of scrubland split by a road but connected by a footbridge, hence Cross The Bridge. I can imagine if this was on my doorstep that one day the notion, an idea you might say would cross my mind that it might be cool to have a race that crossed this bridge and then I would get back to dreaming of that Play-Doh house.

two way bridge anyone?

The hourglass shaped course, climbed from the foot of the hill crossed the bridge climbed to the top of the hill and then descended back to the bottom, once more crossing the bridge. Mostly on singletrack with a nice layer of freshly cut grass on top, it was fairly obvious it was going to get slippy once a few riders got going on it. The vets and womens race was the first to use the whole course, the first couple of laps were ok but then it quickly became apparent that the combination of weak legs, skinny cross tyres and too tall a gearing wasn’t going to get me up that first half of the climb. As I suffered lap after lap watching mountainbikes spin effortlessly up the climb, I became a bit despondent. Why had I wasted my time coming up here? Why had they thought this would make a good cross course, when there was clearly no real advantage to riding a cross bike. I started to think about how much easier it would be on my mountainbike, both up and down. Then without any warning as I passed the finish I was told, “that’s it” Oh! Thanks a fucking bundle for the last lap heads up.

course profile

Gordy fared much better in the seniors race (which apparently was won by someone on a full suspension 29er) but I have to admit I didn’t hang around to watch it as all I could think about was getting home and salvaging something of my Sunday.

broken gate at the side of the track

So as I drove home, I pondered the experience, it was good that someone had taken the initiative to organise a race, very good. It was bad that they had allowed themselves to be seduced by an idea. It was good they had devised a cool course for the really young kids (in fact a bigger version of this would have been spot on for the grown-ups). It was bad that our course essentially was an uphill and a downhill and not a lot else. It was good so many people turned up to support the event. It was bad that someone with a semblance of cross course knowledge didn’t assess the circuit for suitability.

Enough whining, so lets end on a high.

On the bonnie, bonnie banks...

A new venue for the Scottish cyclocross this week with a trip to Balloch, on the banks of Loch Lomond - organised by those stalwarts of the Scottish scene, Glasgow United CC, and based in and around the Loch Lomond Shores visitor attraction.

The course was largely nu-skool, with a definite old skool flavour. If you like Auchentoshan, then you'd have loved this one. An engaging mix of surfaces, with a wee bit of fast singletrack thrown in.

After last week's start at the back strategy paid off in exactly the way you'd expect, I opted for a position in mid-pack which seemed to work a wee bit better. As is pointed out in #SVENNESS 2.3 the sprint in a 'cross race is at the start and not the finish, so it was elbows out and off across the field.

One of the joys of SCX these days is that there's racing for everyone through the field - it might not be a battle for the podium, but there's always someone ahead to be chasing and someone behind to try to keep ahead of.  My race legs are still a long way off (not sure I've ever had them to be honest), but relatively happy with 33rd (and third) - happier still to be racing cross again after a three season lay off...

Of the other VCMers out today, I only spotted Davie briefly as he came backwards through the bunch following a first lap puncture and then tub roll, after a brief go on the spare bike he again punctured and it was to be a DNF. In the Women's race, Teri Wishart finished in 6th whilst elsewhere in the Vets, Simon Muir came home in 12th. In the Senior race, Ian Dunlop had a strong result and hit the top ten for the first time.

Two races to look forward to this week, Hallocross on Thursday and KnoCXburn Loch on Sunday in the next round of the Ridley Scottish Cyclocross Series.


Photo by Joolze Dymond - check out the rest of her photos from today here - joolzedymond.com

Bring the Pain

The season is now properly underway, with round 2 at Callender Park behind us and round 3 looming on the horizon. But what of Callendar Park in Falkirk, pretty much the perfect venue, central, plenty of parking and more importantly huge potential for a very good course. Our hosts Franco Porco and Davie Lines laid out a course that is set to become the one by which all others are measured. Virtually all on grass, with corners of every description, (did anybody count how many corners?) an abundance of off camber, slippy and slimy and slippy again. Add to that the biggest field ever seen at a Scottish Cyclocross event and everything was in place for a great day racing.

Maddy in control

The new format with women, V50+ and Juniors racing first is certainly proving to be a good one, I am pretty certain it has helped encourage more women and V50 men into the scene and if these numbers hold for the season it will have been a great decision. In the womens race round 1 winner Maddy and round 1 sign on queen Ainsley were representing. With 30 women lined up this was going to be a new experience for both, unfortunately I missed most of this race due to getting myself ready for my own race but from what I can gather it was pretty fast and furious, Eileen Roe (Ronde) back for this round and looking lean held on for the victory with Maddy taking a great second not too far behind, these two seem to be rising above the rest of the field and it looks like they will be picking up the pieces of last years battles for the rest of the season.

Gavin working the wide line

Veteran 40+ next up and the bggest news was the return of the mighty Martin Steele alongside Simon Muir, Fraser Waters, Gavin May and myself. Apparently 95 signed on for this race, which made for a pretty heady start but more importantly made for superb racing right through the field. Again credit to the course design as it easily soaked up the riders and there was never any problems overtaking providing you had the legs. After the disaster start at Auchentoshan I was determined to play safe and try to get into a reasonable group and take it from there, happily the start was problem free and I found myself in with some new faces and we were off. Simon and Gavin went off like the proverbial two bob rockets and that would be the last I saw of them until the end where they finished healthily in 9^th and 13^th respectfully. I had great fun in with a mixed bunch of guys including John McComisky stuck to my back wheel like shit on a blanket, to be fair he pushed hard and kept me entertained with some top shelf banter and language. Tragically my strategy was foiled when race winner Gary McCrae (Leslie Bikes) shot past us like we were made of stone on the home straight and denied us another lap of battle, all in all it was superb to actually feel like I was racing with a relentless stream of racers ahead and behind there was no room for mistakes.

the Gazelle like Ian Dunlop

The senior field up next and VCM hopes were on Steve Halsall, Brendan Milliken, Addy Pope, Simon Fairfull, Gordy Mackenzie and Ian Dunlop. Another huge field nearly 90 riders took to the now very greasy course, the race was won very early by Grant Ferguson, who showed what a difference being on a World Cup XC team can make to your performance, behind him though there was fierce battling going on, this wide course really did encourage good open racing. Our guys were led by round 1 podium boy Steve Halsall, who put in another strong ride for 6^th place, which will stand him good in the league placings. Brendan Milliken opend his season with a 19^th, Addy a couple of places behind in 21^st, Simon in 23^rd, Ian 25^th and Gordy 34th. Again truly awesome results in a field as packed as this one, keep it coming. 

Applied Pressure™

Phew, it was an exhausting day and one that folks have been talking about since, again a huge thankyou to the organisers and their army of helpers.

Lots of racing over the next week with Lomond Shores Sunday 27^th, Hallocross Thursday 31^st and Round 3 at KnocXburn on Nov 3^rd.

Bring it on. 

all photos by Anthony Robson 

how we doing
Maddy Robinson 2nd

Ainsley Turbitt 13th

Simon Muir 9th

Gavin May 13th

Fraser Waters 39th

Chrisd 48th

Martin Steele 63rd

Steve Halsall 6th

Brendan Milliken 19th

Addy Pope 21st
Simon Fairfull 23rd

Ian Dunlop 25^th
Gordy Mackenzie 34th