Geeky Yet Waterproof

The mud has been described as “epic”. I disagree. I say it wasn’t mud, but a meld of peanut butter and Play-Doh with a hint of some mondo jelly and a splash of brown honey that feels like residue from the bottom of a lake.



On Sunday in Hillsboro I did my second cyclocross race, unofficially dubbed “Mudfest 2007″. Last week at Estacada, I thought I was seeing mud. Now I realize that was simply wet dirt. What we raced in this weekend, I’ve heard, put all the cyclocross races for the past year to shame.

There was about three times as much running in this race as in the last, and only about half of it was up hills. At the beginning the mud was deep enough for you to sink down to your rims; as the race went on, the mud got worse, and by the end your wheels could sink down to the hubs.



But enough with the mud. Let me take you on a tour of the course, FREE of charge (and of bike)…



You start out with about a quarter of a mile on solid pavement. Then, you turn off onto a trail of relatively hard packed mud. After a few hundred meters, the fun starts to start: the trail cuts across a ditch filled with water, which will slow you down drastically if you try to simply ride through it. (I discovered after the first lap that flying through the air is much more efficient than the more traditional method of traveling by ground.) About 20 feet later, you repeat the same process cutting across another ditch, only this time it’s uphill. You then chug over a small rise, and proceed to descend into a pit of mild Peanut Butter Mud. When you get through that, you are rewarded with a stretch of dry Gravel-N-Dirt™. But just when you start to get your speed up, WHAMMO! Two 16-inch barriers force you to dismount, pick up your bike, and jump. Not far ahead, the path takes a couple 180° curves, and then turns 90° right off the edge of a 10-inch curb. After that is several hundred meters of more mud and Gravel-N-Dirt™, which eventually takes you straight through The Lake: a ten foot long mud pit which is filled with six inches of water. On the other side of the water is an incline consisting of completely unridable mud, up which you must run. When you get to the top the path takes a curve off to the right and then to the left up a short and steep run-up, which immediately turns 180° back down into a swamp. (I almost ran into a boundary stake here, thinking it would be a good idea to ride fast down the hill. Nope.) When you get through the swamp, you ride a few hundred feet on some (almost) hard-packed ground, and then are dumped into a bowl of peanut butter, which continues for about three minutes (depending on how much you actually ride, and how much you run). The path then changes to hard dirt and, seeing a steep hill up ahead, you try to gain speed. But that is not to be, because of the two barriers at the bottom of the hill! You dismount, jump over the barriers, and run up the hill. At the top the path curves 90° off to the right, onto hard packed gravel. But after about 50 feet, you turn right again, off a cliff into the mud pit, for just long enough to throw you off your bike. With that task completed, the path curves around 180° back up the cliff (hope you’re good at mountain climbing). At the top you are rewarded with a few hundred meters of more hard-packed gravel (although I squandered my reward trying to get clipped in the whole time). But just when you think things are starting to get easier, the path takes a plunge, down, around, and down some more, right back into The Lake. After you’ve finished with your swim, you crawl back up onto pavement and dignity, where you will momentarily find the Finish line (provided this was your last of three laps).



So now that you’ve successfully(?) completed the course, let me tell you how I faired.

My first lap was mostly crash-free, with only a few splashes of mud. But my second lap was far from it: in one place, I have no idea what happened, but all of a sudden I found myself lying ten ten feet from my bike, face down in the mud. When I had crawled back to my bike, I found that my bars had been knocked crooked with the wheel, and it required adjusting twice.

Later in that lap came the highlight of my race (at least for the spectators): I was coming back down through The Lake, when somehow I managed to ride my front wheel straight into an invisible hole under the water. In slow motion, my back wheel rose into the air, up, up, up… and down the other side. I did a front-flip over the bars, face-first into the mud.

My third and last lap also had a crowd-pleaser, in the same Lake, and in the same hole: making the mistake of thinking lakes could simply be ridden through, I tipped over, 200 meters before the Finish line, and lost my shoe in the mud. Since my foot was completely numb from the cold, I at first didn’t notice, so I got up and kept riding. Needless to say, I quickly discovered that I had lost some gear, but I wasn’t about to go back into The Lake when I could be finishing the race within 30 seconds.



So, with one functioning foot, I crossed the Finish line. I can’t tell you how useless bare feet are with eggbeater pedals.



Below is a video so you can see the mud first-hand, and then some photos so you can see the mud even more first-hand! And if after that your thirst for mud is still not quenched, there’s lots more on my photo gallery.