Geeky Yet Waterproof

On Sunday I did my first Cyclocross race, at Estacada Cross Crusade. We also brought my friend Iza, who, being an exchange student from Brazil, got to see what Oregon is REALLY like.

For those who don’t know, Cyclocross is a form of bike racing which includes pavement, wooded trails, steep hills, barriers, and other insidious obstacles.



Cyclocross attracts a lot of interesting people. We saw more than a few unicycles, and several people who hadn’t yet succeeded in taking off their Halloween costumes from the last cyclocross race. Also present was a guy dressed up as a devil with blue spiked hair, standing in the middle of the track, carrying a plastic pitchfork and a water bottle filled with beer.



The race didn’t have a set number of laps: instead, you race for 45 minutes, and then whoever finishes their lap first after those 45 minutes starts everyone’s last lap.

The course was about three miles long, so I ended up doing four laps in about an hour. The biggest obstacles were:

• a tight and steep off-camber turn (on which many a foolish rider wiped out)
• a stretch of swamp consisting of Grade 2 mud (sometimes referred to as Adobe Clay), which according to the linked Mud Glossary, “slows down the bike and drains a rider’s energy without apparent cause”
• a steep hill covered in mud so thick that you have to get off your bike and run up, unless you have motorcycle tires
• and finally, a section of six 10-inch high barriers (aka The Six Pack), forcing you to get off your bike, pick it up, and jump over the barriers

Before this I’d only done road and track racing, so having my back wheel constantly sliding around was something to get used to.

Amazingly, I only fell once, and it was more of a tip-over than a crash. Yet it was enough for me to be able to personally meet with the mud face-to-face.



I ended up taking 12th out of 33 people in the Junior category. Considering I never train in cycling, I don’t think I did too badly.

I had a lot of insane fun at this race, and cyclocross is a great way to get acquainted with bad weather, mud, and Drty Bikes. I’ll definitely be doing this again next week!



EDIT: The Single-Speed Cyclocross World Championships also took place at Estacada about an hour after we left. We didn’t stay to watch, but that could be a good thing since I heard the winners wore golden Speedos on the podium…