Cross campus cross racing

Last night I joined in on my first Cross practice with some riders from Proteus and the Bike Rack out around the UMD College Park campus. I got there a bit late and watched as the group finished up the first warm up lap, a bit in awe as the dismounted picked up their bikes and ran and then hopped right back on again, one after another in a line. I’d never tried remounting again and had only dismounted a couple of times so I was pretty nervous about the whole thing and watching them do it so flawlessly didn’t help.

Photo by Jim Wilson

I joined in for another warm up lap completing my first dismount/mount combos with more ease then I expected which really just means it was easier not to bust my balls then I thought it would be. I was not graceful by any means of the word and only got maybe two or three really clean mounts throughout the night but I definitely feel a bit better about doing it then a day previous.

Practice was fun (aka hard as hell) and I think I did alright but we did only do one lap each time before resting for a good 5 to 10 minutes so I’m not sure how this would translate to an actual race. When finishing the laps it was all I could do to make it up the massive hill next to the Comcast center where the unofficial finish line was so I can’t even imagine what it’d be like if we had to continue and do 5 or 10 more laps after that. The physical exhaustion of cross is quickly becoming apparent to me though and I can’t wait to get out there and try to race it.

Riding on the UMD campus was pretty fun also and the course Jim laid out was pretty tight. There were plenty of extra "obstacles" to handle including people and vehicles so it added a little spice to the riding. A few times I almost was taken out by a car but it was really not much different then riding around DC. Can't make it out next week, but I definitely plan on making this a regular ride while it lasts.