the Cyclo cross racing post

cyclingsheep

Great course @Kettering yesterday for the Central League. Shame I didn't give it my best, face plant into a hawthorn bush on the first off camber corner and a flat tyre during the first lap had me ready to just get off (in fact I did) but a teammate offered me a wheel and as luck would have it it fit. Race then comprised of me doing my best not to finish last......still a great fun course

tgotb

Yep, was a great course. Lots of slippery mud but not too sticky, and very little long grass to bind it all together in your mech. Slick enough to have you going sideways round the corners, but still enough grip to keep it all rideable.

I'm well impressed with Kettering CC. As far as I know they haven't promoted a CX race before (certainly not in the Central League) but this year they've done two, both in great venues with excellent facilities.

cyclingsheep

TGOTB wrote:

Yep, was a great course. Lots of slippery mud but not too sticky, and very little long grass to bind it all together in your mech. Slick enough to have you going sideways round the corners, but still enough grip to keep it all rideable.

I'm well impressed with Kettering CC. As far as I know they haven't promoted a CX race before (certainly not in the Central League) but this year they've done two, both in great venues with excellent facilities.

Totally agree, I'd happily return to either venue

Robb0

Did any of you race at Hog Hill yesterday? We tried to make the course not too muddy, to avoid a repeat of the regional champs clay-fest there. On Saturday our course was 100% rideable apart from the steps. But we hadn't bargained on overnight rain which made quite a difference by the time the juniors/vets/women had carved it up! Sadly a few mech hangers were lost, and tellingly the seniors winner was on a singlespeed. The majority of it was rideable nonetheless. I certainly had fun - I'm well and truly a convert to disc brakes now.

tgotb

Robb0 wrote:

Did any of you race at Hog Hill yesterday? We tried to make the course not too muddy, to avoid a repeat of the regional champs clay-fest there. On Saturday our course was 100% rideable apart from the steps. But we hadn't bargained on overnight rain which made quite a difference by the time the juniors/vets/women had carved it up! Sadly a few mech hangers were lost, and tellingly the seniors winner was on a singlespeed. The majority of it was rideable nonetheless. I certainly had fun - I'm well and truly a convert to disc brakes now.

Single speed at Hog Hill :shock:

Bad luck with the conditions - there again, CX is about getting round whatever's there, so the competitors can't really complain if they have to do a lot of running in January. Sounds like the event was pretty successful anyway (not that I'd doubt it with you guys running the show!)

I gave it a miss purely because I don't like racing CX at Hog Hill. Nothing wrong with the venue, it's just a personal thing. Do you know whether it was just a one-off issue with Bethlem, or is that venue gone for good?

Robb0

TGOTB wrote:

Single speed at Hog Hill :shock:

Yes, it's not for me. I honestly thought it was hilly enough to eradicate that sort of shenanigans.

TGOTB wrote:

I gave it a miss purely because I don't like racing CX at Hog Hill. Nothing wrong with the venue, it's just a personal thing.

Is that because races there used to use a lot of unpassable singletrack? There was nowhere you couldn't overtake yesterday. (You don't have to answer if it's really personal).

Bethlem weren't too impressed with the damage we did to their grounds. Their opinion isn't likely to improve any faster than their grass. Hopefully we'll find some new venues e.g. farmers who want their fields ploughed. A new one next weekend isn't it?

tgotb

Robb0 wrote:

TGOTB wrote:

I gave it a miss purely because I don't like racing CX at Hog Hill. Nothing wrong with the venue, it's just a personal thing.

Is that because races there used to use a lot of unpassable singletrack? There was nowhere you couldn't overtake yesterday. (You don't have to answer if it's really personal).

Partly - I'm definitely not a fan of unpassable singletrack on CX courses, but I don't really enjoy bermed gravel tracks either; at Hog Hill it's pretty hard to avoid having quite a lot of one or the other, especially if the grass is waterlogged. It's just a bit too MTB-y for my taste. As I said, not a criticism of the venue in general, it's just not one I enjoy as much as others. It's also surprisingly hard to get to from where I am.

andyp

Robb0 wrote:

TGOTB wrote:

Single speed at Hog Hill :shock:

Yes, it's not for me. I honestly thought it was hilly enough to eradicate that sort of shenanigans.

TGOTB wrote:

I gave it a miss purely because I don't like racing CX at Hog Hill. Nothing wrong with the venue, it's just a personal thing.

Is that because races there used to use a lot of unpassable singletrack? There was nowhere you couldn't overtake yesterday. (You don't have to answer if it's really personal).

Bethlem weren't too impressed with the damage we did to their grounds. Their opinion isn't likely to improve any faster than their grass. Hopefully we'll find some new venues e.g. farmers who want their fields ploughed. A new one next weekend isn't it?

Which is a nonsense, as the grounds recovered perfectly. The tractor they have chews up the tracks more than any cyclists. I train there as much as I can now, just out of spite.

Jon, who won at Hog Hill yesterday, would probably win on a recumbent, he's technically very good and strong too. He won at Frylands Wood on singlespeed too I think.

I gave singlespeed a bash at Cyclopark on the 3rd of January, was a little bit overgeared and not having that option of knocking it down a gear makes it unrelentingly hard. No issues with the bike though, unlike yesterday where I lost the chain 4 times due to mud build up.

tgotb

I do wonder whether hub gears are an option for those conditions. Would presumably need a separate shifter, but for mere mortals that could still be preferable to a singlespeed (or conventional gears with the rear mech stuffed through the wheel). There again, you'd still want a conventional CX bike for less muddy conditions, and if you're going to have two bikes anyway you might aswell leave the second one in the pit, which means you don't need one of them to have hub gears.

A non-scientific straw poll in the Central league suggests that the vast majority of mech failures are Shimano, with SRAM MTB mechs looking like a more reliable option; anyone have any information that supports or refutes that hypothesis?

Robb0

Interesting idea. Hub gears are supposed to be a tad less efficient than derailleurs, though whether that holds for jockey wheels wrapped in grass and mud is anybody's guess.
I gather SRAM allows you to use an MTB rear mech which is probably more suited to the conditions i.e. stronger. With Shimano you can't as the cable actuation ratio is incompatible. Whether anyone does or not is another matter. Anyway most people use Shimano, hence the higher failure rate.

devhads

I do wonder whether hub gears are an option for those conditions.

There's a guy who races on a hub geared flat handle bar bike in the Eastern league. He goes quite well on it and obviously never has any issues with mechs but does always say he suffers on the hillier courses as it's pretty heavy.

Robb0

The last London League was cancelled yesterday due to the commissaire's safety concerns about barbed wire alongside part of the course. We only learned of this after many of us had driven over 1.5hrs down to Sussex, so obviously there were quite a few unhappy people. It seems a bit daft the course was only inspected on the morning of the race, although I gather the organisers got a commissaire to check it out back in December but no objections were raised then. Surely there has to be a better way?

tgotb

Robb0 wrote:

Surely there has to be a better way?

Probably. How do you make sure that doesn't happen in the race that you organise?

devhads

It seems a bit daft the course was only inspected on the morning of the race, although I gather the organisers got a commissaire to check it out back in December but no objections were raised then

It could have been a different commissaire who tend to have different views on what is safe. In the race we organised we wanted to include some tyres as a hurdle, the type you step in and out of on an obstacle course. We have a commissaire in our club who was part of the organising team who thought it would be fine but when the actual race commissaire saw a preview video of the lap, we were asked to take it out. Maybe that is the better way, submitting preview videos to commissaires in advance.

Robb0

TGOTB wrote:

Robb0 wrote:

Surely there has to be a better way?

Probably. How do you make sure that doesn't happen in the race that you organise?

I was a mere minion, but ours was a bit different as Hog Hill is a well used venue for cross, with lots of options. We did use some new variations as we tried to avoid the worst mud and had to avoid the road racing circuit, and the comm wasn't happy with the planned start on the day so we had to relocate it to the field at the bottom. Yesterday was a new venue with limited route options I think as it used farm tracks.

Robb0

devhads wrote:

It could have been a different commissaire who tend to have different views on what is safe. In the race we organised we wanted to include some tyres as a hurdle, the type you step in and out of on an obstacle course. We have a commissaire in our club who was part of the organising team who thought it would be fine but when the actual race commissaire saw a preview video of the lap, we were asked to take it out. Maybe that is the better way, submitting preview videos to commissaires in advance.

Or even better, getting them to ride it :roll: https://www.facebook.com/VeloBagarreur/ ... cation=ufi

tgotb

There are so many single points of failure in an amateur-run race, that I think we're lucky we get as few last-minute cancellations as we do. When I hear about issues like this, my first thought is, "There but for the grace of God..."

Issues that could trip up almost any organiser at the last minute include:
Key person (eg commissaire, timekeeper) unable to get to the race due to illness, car breakdown, accident etc
Emergency road works
Weather (Not uncommon for TTs to be abandoned mid-race due to weather)
Unexpected traffic levels (due to an event or roadworks elsewhere)
Event adjacent to the course (particularly an issue for road races)
Accident on the course
Landowner getting the jitters

I gather a much higher-profile event was in danger of last-minute cancellation due to landowner issues this season, despite the venue being used frequently in the past (for anyone else who knows about this, maybe better not to discuss details on this forum), so it can happen to anyone; I think we should count ourselves lucky that it happens as infrequently as it does.

In the case of last Sunday's race, I feel for the organisers who put in a lot of work and weren't able to see most of the fruits of that effort. I hope the organising club isn't impacted financially; if I had entered (and I nearly did) I wouldn't be claiming a refund...

MrGrumpy

did my first ever race on Sunday, was blowing out my arris big time. Didn`t realise 60 mins at max HR felt ike till then The course was a mare, mudfest a bit like the Somme, toiling to turn a wheel, of camber which was a get off and run, obstacles , it was just crazy fell of twice. However completed the race , was lapped 3 times by the leaders felt terrible during it but elated come the end Plans already being made for Autumn/Winter later this year, hope to lose the extra 9/10 kg I`m carrying and by that time I hope to have a lighter set of wheels for racing.