My calendar is telling me that today’s cyclocross race is the last one for me in 2011. A diary clash takes out my ‘local’ race at Meadowmill, the championship race at Auchentoshan requires a full race license (\u00a336) which is too pricey, and the final race is on Mull in December – not an attractive proposition, given the weather last December.<\/p>\n
I’ve had a good time in my first season of cyclocross. I completed all four races I entered – 3 rounds of SCX plus the Hallocross race. I’ve learned lots about racing – momentum, pacing, fuelling. I got plenty of practise stripping down my bike and rebuilding it in between races. I built my wheels from scratch and raced on them. And last, but not least, no injuries!<\/p>\n
The limiting factor was always race fitness. Sure, technique and bike make some difference. But ultimately I struggled to maintain pace across the whole hour. I’d set out trying to conserve energy and be sensible, but would always fade in the last quarter of the race.<\/p>\n
It’s mindblowing to see how fast the top guys are. They’re fast everywhere. And they’re as fast on the final lap as they are on the first. Given the not-insignificant amount of training I did this year between Alpe d’Huez and SCX, it’s sobering to see people delivering racing laps 50% faster than I can do.<\/p>\n
Still, I definitely did a lot of fun cycling in 2011. Alpe d’Huez: done. Cyclocross: done. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My calendar is telling me that today’s cyclocross race is the last one for me in 2011. A diary clash takes out my ‘local’ race at Meadowmill, the championship race at Auchentoshan requires a full race license (\u00a336) which is too pricey, and the final race is on Mull in December – not an attractive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/lejog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/lejog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/lejog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/lejog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/lejog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=346"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/lejog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":349,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/lejog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions\/349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/lejog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/lejog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/lejog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}