Catching on fast

Cyclocross racing is growing in popularity in the cycling community

By Tara Nurin

Philly EDGE Correspondent

They are cycling’s undisputed madmen, and madwomen.

Cyclocross racers -- though most have a road racing or mountain biking pedigree -- are wild, dirty, tough and viciously fearless. 

“Who does it?  Really, really twisted people who enjoy suffering,” says 40-year-old Bob Piacine of Sellersville, who’s been cross racing for about eight years. “Maybe I’m kind of a masochist and I enjoy the pain.”

When he says “pain,” he means it.  Broken bones, smashed faces, fierce vomiting, frostbite that doesn’t go away for months … they’re all part of the deliciously addictive agony of cross racing.

“It’s hard to explain why cross is cool, because it just doesn’t make any sense,” chuckles Tom McDaniel, 45, of Wilmington.  “You’re in mud; you’re eating mud; you’re sliding through mud; you’re racing in mud.  You’re pushing your body flat out and you’re kind of surfing the edge of puking and going as fast as you can….  It is really, really hard and really, really intense.”

Conceived in Belgium and France at the beginning of last century, cyclocross is a hybrid of road and mountain bike racing. It claims to be the fastest growing segment of bike racing in the country, with 100,000 cross racers registered with USA Cycling, the sport’s American governing body.

A popular way to keep road and mountain bikers trained during the September through December off-season, cross features racers competing in packs at top speeds for less than an hour, sprinting about six or seven times around a relatively short, but crowded, “mixed media” course, which consists of some combination of roads, grass, mountains, sand, forest, stairs and assorted obstacles. 

            “Because of its intensity and duration, you’re going full blast from the gun,” explains Piacine, a race organizer who competes at the elite master’s level.  “You’re at your highest heart level that you can hold from the start of the whistle to the end of the race.”

Fellow organizer and female master elite racer Tammy Ebersole, 43, of Warminster, puts it another way: “You’re redlining the entire race.”

So, there you are, peddling as fast as you can over the river and through the woods, then, bam, here’s a heavy wooden barrier placed in your way – a foot-and-a-half tall and hooked into the ground with metal ties.  It’s too high to get over - too low to get under.

“It’s not like if you hit them they’re going to move,” says Piacine, who’s watched more than one racer crash face-first into one of these barriers.    

According to Piacine, you have a few options, some more logical than others. “You’ll be going hot into a barrier -- meaning you’re coming fast into a barrier -- and your choices are three-fold.  You can either kick the barrier and crash really hard, which I’ve seen people do; or you can get off your bike and carry (it) across the barrier, then jump back on it; and then there are some people who do what’s called a ‘bunny hop,’ and they’ll just jump their bike across the barriers…. I can get over the first one but I wouldn’t try the second!”

Twenty-nine-year-old Mid-Atlantic Championship Series winner Ryan Leech, of Philadelphia, describes the most favored approach: “There’s a special technique in cyclocross for dismounting your bike, carrying it and remounting really quickly so you don’t lose any speed.… You basically kind of come full speed, step off your bike from the side and grab it and hoist it onto your shoulder.”
            This concept of jumping off the bike and carrying it does make the sport more dangerous and exciting, but it’s also earned cyclocross a wee bit of ridicule from the uninitiated masses. 

“I used to think it was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard -- a bike race where you carry the bike,” writes Mid-Atlantic Cyclocross Series Media Director Ken Getchell.   “Then I saw one, and I was mesmerized.”

That’s pretty much how it goes with cross fans and racers, who usually end up full of awe and respect for the sport as soon as they see it.  Because, as if the speed, intensity, technicality and competition weren’t enough, riders also have to contend with the weather. Given that the competitions are held in fall through early winter, and are hardly ever cancelled, cyclists attack their routes as reliably as mailmen.

“The weather can get really extreme and they don’t usually stop races because of it…. Last year there was a nor’easter and it snowed five inches in the hour that we had the race,” Leech remembers. 

“One time,” he continues, “it was a very cold day a couple of years ago and I had completely numb hands and I crashed into a pond.  So I completely submerged my whole body into a pond, and it was about 30 degrees.”

Despite these kinds of frequent calamities, cross racers like Leech are watching the leaves changing from green to gold, and getting pumped for this year’s racing schedule.  To defend his championship title, Leech needs to rack up major points by winning some big national and international races that are coming to the Philly area over the next few weeks (see sidebar for details). 

Leech is just a “weekend warrior,” meaning that he races for fun, but he’ll be competing against cyclists who make a living this way, including some former Olympians and Tour de France participants.

And while Leech’s pond accident probably sucked for him, you can bet that it drove fans crazy, and that there will be more people cheering him on this year than last.

People love to cheer on blood sports. 

Though an American race doesn’t draw the throngs of 60,000 that sometimes congregate for an international cross race in Belgium, it is acquiring what racers say is a definite cult following.

“One thing I know for sure, when people show up to our races for the first time, they don’t leave.  They stay until the very end because, like me, they’re mesmerized.  And, more than a few of them have a smile on their face the whole time,” Getchell says. 

It’s especially easy to hang out and watch an entire cross race, if you can handle the wind-chill and sleet that may freeze that smile onto your face.  For one, you can usually see the whole crazy race from beginning to end, given that organizers often stage them on farms or other plots of open land.

Then you’ve got the social factor, which is helping spawn this generation of regulars who never miss a race. Picnics and beer are de rigeur, as are – get this – cowbells. 

The tradition of loudly ringing cowbells to express jubilance and support started in the early European days of cross racing and has been fervently picked up by us Yanks. 

Then, adding to the giddy camaraderie, is the fact that the racers themselves join the crowd for beers and cheers when their round of competition is over.

 “You race so hard against each other but then after each race, you all drink beer together and it’s really like a family,” says Ebersole, whose comments are echoed by many cross racers.  (They all also like to point out that this is NOT the case for road racers whose rivalry lingers long after the bikes have been put away.)

Leech says the close congeniality is actually a big part of what drives him to regularly put his body and spirit through such hell.  But before he decides aloud that this is his motivation, he first pauses to think about cyclocross racing to comment:

“It doesn’t sound fun at all, does it?” 

Then he laughs and offers his real response.

“The community is a really fun community and everyone has a lot of respect for one another.  It’s really like a traveling circus on the weekends.”

To that we say: “More cowbell!”

Watching a cyclocross race is free.  All race days begin at 10 a.m. and last several hours. 

Upcoming races:

• Granogue Cross (international): Saturday, October 21; 2900 Montchanin Road, Wilmington, DE
• Wissahickon Cross (international): Sunday, October 22; Ludwig’s Corner, Philadelphia
• Highland Park Cyclo-Cross (international): Sunday, November 12; Donaldson Park, Highland Park, NJ
• Guy’s Cross (national): Saturday, November 18; 6234 Pidcock Creek Road, New Hope
• EVO Cross (national): Sunday, November 19; 6234 Pidcock Creek Road, New Hope

If you’d like to learn more about becoming a cross rider, drop in on a weekly training session, held every Wednesday at 6 p.m. from October to December in the lower parking lot of the Mann Music Center in Fairmount Park.

For more information, visit www.midatlanticcross.com.

-Tara Nurin