DFL in Golden Gate Park

If there was anything stranger than finding myself lining up on the start line of a cyclo-cross race tonight, it was that I, like most of my rivals, was wearing a dress.

Yep, "cross racers are crazy" - that's what I thought last time I was standing course-side at a 'cross race watching the pain in their eyes as the riders revved to the redline for a full hour while attempting to keep upright as they probed the limits of their handling skills on the loose terrain.

Me with Sports Basement marketing guy, Kevin Rusch in the WonderWoman outfit.

Thanks to Mark Dawson for the pic.

The last 'cross race I actually rode was in 1992, and I still remembered how much I suffered in those gruelling events. I thought back a couple of days to that conversation in Sports Basement when I'd spontaneously agreed to come out and ride. It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing, like when I signed up to ride in the Furnace Creek 508 for the first time, back in 2006. If I'd thought about this even for a second I'd have been at home now doing something sensible with a cup of tea and some cake.

And if you're wondering why we were all wearing dresses it's because we were too cheap to come up with the $5 entry fee (the rule is if you wear a dress you ride free). That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

By the way, it was an illegal race. Illegal in the sense of unpermitted. Permitted races are for people who don't wear dresses. Now here's a thought: if the riders aren't wearing dresses, should it really be called a 'cross race?

On my way to the event I was passed by a guy whose dress fell down to his rear wheel and tangled in the brake. I suggested he might want to hem it a little higher for the next event. He looked puzzled. The sheer number of macho types willing to don a dress to save $5 was impressive to the point of suspicion. Could it be something to do with cultural creep in San Francisco?

There must have been 120 hairy-armed riders in dresses at the startline, heck, there were even some women with moustaches. And as if all that weren't entertainment enough, a brass quartet soon started playing oompah music.

They lined us up and made us run to our bikes. Seconds later we were sucking in clouds of dust as the quick kids got away early.

The problem with advancing years is that one loses whatever lightening there ever was in one's pace. But on the other hand, you get better at pacing yourself and hanging tough. But mountain bikes were definitely slower than cross bikes on this course, and I was working hard to stay in the top 20.

About half way through the race we started to lap the back-markers.

Thanks to Mark Dawson for the pic.

The riders barrelled along the sandy paths of Golden Gate Park, bumping and grinding with each other as we strove to stay upright and always be ahead of the other guy. From time to time, the rude musical interjections of the oompah band cut through the pain to remind me of how absurd the whole thing was.

After about 20 minutes this guy I'd been duelling with for three laps (another mountain biker) made a bad passing move on a lapped rider and went down semi-hard onto a slippery log. He got up fast, but he'd hurt himself, and maybe a little too gleefully I moved in for the kill, dropping down a gear and sprinting ahead before he started to feel better.

Some of the young hopefuls had gone out too hard and now were coming back to me. I was thinking how their legs must be feeling even more like concrete than mine. This was getting fun, at least it would've been if it didn't hurt so much.

And then suddenly the riders ahead were riding back down the course towards me, shouting "Ranger on the course." MAJOR bummer! I did a quick 180 and joined the throng hastening back to the start to unpin our numbers and pretend we hadn't been racing.

She arrived a minute later, ticket book in stern hand, and Joe the organizer went to face the music. Not a squeak out of the oompah band...

Joe talks fast to avoid getting a $103 ticket for an unpermitted race.

A few minutes later she was smiling. She wasn't going to ticket him, but she'd sure as heck shattered the moment. It's the same whatever you're wearing: Stopping half way through really spoils the fun.

Nifty Ten Fifty - April 4

A few years ago now, former Clif Bar marketing guru, Paul McKenzie, concocted the formula for a bike ride that would haunt hardcore cyclists for the rest of eternity. He called it the Nifty Ten Fifty. This is a route that comprises 54 miles and 10,000 feet of climbing in ten punishing ascents that criss-cross the East Bay hills.

Each year the McPaulster has sent an email encouraging me and others to join the ride, and commonsense has always prevailed. I don't quite know what happened this year, but I decided I'd take up his challenge. Looking back, I wish I'd studied the route map more carefully beforehand, it really was alarming!

10,000 feet of climbing in 54 miles. Think about it, that would be almost 2,000 feet every 10 miles on average, right? Actually it's worse than that. Since half of the ride is descending, think 2,000 feet of climbing every five miles. Here's a comparison: Mt Diablo, a highly respected climb among cyclists in the East Bay area, gains about 3,000 feet of elevation in about nine miles if you take the steeper North Gate Road. So the Nifty Ten Fifty is considerably more demanding than riding Mt Diablo... several times over.

The average gradient of the climbs in the Nifty Ten Fifty is about 15%. That's almost twice as steep as the notorious Alpe d'Huez climb in the Tour de France.

If you're starting to think this ride is bordering on insanity, you'd be among the majority of cyclists. The Nifty Ten Fifty is for the extreme few who've ridden or raced through numerous challenges and are looking for something that's so hard the best part is reaching the end.

A group of eight assembled at the start, and this year we didn't reach the end. A violent weather front coming in gave us the perfect out. With strong winds whipping at our spokes on the steep descents, and driving rain numbing our fingers, we decided it was getting dangerous and curtailed the ride at the half-way point. I never thought I'd be so grateful for foul weather!

We'd climbed 5,000 feet in 25 miles. My legs felt like jelly, and would still be feeling a little creaky three days later. Yet somehow the memory of it is exhilarating. Will I do this ride again? How I wish I could say No with some certainty.

A New Breed of Cycling Champ?

The significance of Cadel Evans's world championship victory has many aspects, but one that has been overlooked by most commentators is arguably the most significant: the people who are changing the culture and traditions of the old European cycling model.

There are two parts to this: the geography; and the cycling history. Looking at the geographical part, Evans' win is evidence that the sport is slowly becoming more global. By this I mean that the tight clique of nations in western Continental Europe are slowly loosening their grip. This might seem to some like a voluntary action, but I don't think so. It is no secret that for several decades, many continental Europeans have held onto the opinion that the anglo nations (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States, etc.) don't really understand the essence of bicycle road racing.

There is some historical justification for this view. Looking at the world championship results back to 1927, we see that the first time an anglo rider to win a world championship was the Briton, Tom Simpson, in 1965. This was, in fact, only the second time a rider from outside the clique (France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands) had won a road world's. So even though the prejudice seems mistaken now, you can see how it might have been formed.

Germans, Muller and Altig won in 1952 and '66, but the next time a non-clique nation won it was Greg Lemond in 1983 and again in '89. Lemond was really the start of the revolution, because he won several Tours de France as well, and showed the world that angl0 nations can understand cycling well enough to win its greatest prizes (some in the clique still wouldn't admit this - and at the time pointed to the fact that Lemond had a French-sounding name!). In 1987 Stephen Roche of Ireland claimed the rainbow jersey (in the same year he won the Tour de France and Giro d'Italia), and his compatriot Sean Kelly deserves credit too, because he was the most successful one-day racer of this era and it was paradoxical that he never won a road world's title. He was that good, and even the die-hards in Europe grudgingly admitted that Kelly was unbeatable in one-day competition.

During the 1980s we began to see a lot of English speakers on the top step of the podium. Fast forward again four years to 1993, when a young Lance Armstrong took the title, and it really was starting to look as though a new order was being established in road cycling.

Next we saw the emergence of Spain as a major force in international cycling, as Abraham Olano took the first rainbow jersey for his nation in 1994, beginning a decade when Spain would win five of the ten world's titles.

Romans Vaintsteins won it for Latvia in 2000, which further rocked the tradition, but toward the end of the first decade in the new millenium the old guard reasserted itself with Boonen winning for Belgium in 2005, followed by three Italian wins.

So bringing the conversation back to Evans: he brought to three the number of Anglo nations who have won a world championship; he was the first Australian to win the title. Evans' brilliantly tactical victory at Mendrisio in September 2009 made the statement that not only in the past 30 years have the clique nations had to share the rainbow jersey, but they've shared it with English speakers from several different nations.

The next part is briefer, but it is no less significant .... and again it's to do with exploding snobbish myths and traditions.

This is about the type of bicycles a champion has ridden in his career. Tradition has it that the world champion only ever rides a road bike in his life, with the occasional exceptions of traditional disciplines such as cyclo-cross or maybe track.

Not so for Evans. Cadel evans tooled about on a BMX bike as a child before taking up mountain biking as his sport of choice. Needless to say he excelled in the fat tire sport before deciding to seek fame and fortune on the road - where he became one of the top cyclists of his generation excelling in the Tour de France and now winning a world championship.

This resoundingly makes the point that it doesn't matter where a cyclist learns the sport. If the talent, dedication/desire, psyche, etc. are there, the rider can switch to a given discipline (road, track, mountain bike, bmx, etc.) at a relatively late age and still excel.

Some traditions are worth preserving, but cycling has a few that aren't. Lance Armstrong noticed this, and wears black socks in protest. Cadel Evans, while hardly an outspoken rebel, in quietly doing his own thing has become the latest in a line of Anglo riders who are irrevocably broadening the scope of this great and storied sport.