Death Before DNF (“Did Not Finish,” for those of you who’ve never been faced with the concept of dropping out of a race) may be a bit extreme for a title, but when I was falling off the back of a race on Sunday, I contemplated titling this column “Know When To Hold ‘Em and Know When To Fold ‘Em.” Not only is that an excruciatingly long title, it’s also total crap in cycling.
For the past month and a half, I have lived and breathed cyclocross, as I took over as online editor for Cyclocross Magazine. And let me tell you, it is an extremely glamorous lifestyle.
Working in your pajamas is glamorous, right?
Game face, pain cave, race face … as cyclocross racers, we’ve heard those terms thrown around nearly every time we’ve raced our bikes. But do you ever stop and think about what they really refer to, and what they mean for your racing?
As May turned to June and as June is quickly disappearing, it’s occurred to me that the start of cyclocross season is actually not as far away as I thought. At first, this notion made me want to start jumping for joy. But then, it hit me just how unprepared I am for cyclocross season and just how big my “to do” list is. Like Mike Birner suggested in his piece on Building a Base in the Off-Season, I had made a list of what I needed to work on over the summer. And yeah, it’s a long list.
byMolly Hurford If you see me at a cyclocross race, road race or triathlon, the odds are good that you’ve noticed the big burly guy standing with me, fiddling with my bike or yelling at me to go faster. You also may have seen him racing Masters, rocking bib shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. That [...]
This week, I’m not entirely cyclocross-specific, per se, but getting an insider view of the pro life is definitely something that may be of interest for those who are interested in pursuing a full-time career as a cyclocross racer. Getting to be a “peripheral pro” for a week, as I would put it, was a whole new experience for someone used to working a solid 80 hour week with minimal time for training. As it turns out, these guys take rest just as hard as they take training and racing, and they certainly excel at it. So, this week has had me thinking a lot about what it means to be a pro cyclist in the US today, and if it’s something I could ever imagine doing, having witnessed it firsthand, from prerace meetings to the trip to the mall in search of gold chains.
This week, we introduced a new feature of the site called Newbie News, which is designed to help new racers learn some of the ins and outs of the greatest sport on earth, confront their fears of race areas like barriers, bunny hopping or dismounts, and to give riders a chance to ask questions that they might have been afraid to ask otherwise. (You know the saying ‘there are no stupid questions’? Yeah, that’s extremely true in cyclocross.) The Newbie feature is hugely important to me, because we’ve all been there. At some point, even Katie Compton was a newbie. And not too long ago, I was seriously new to the sport. I’m still new enough that I’m learning a lot as I post these articles, and it’s my hope that you’ll be learning along with me.
Meet Molly Hurford, Cyclocross Magazine’s new Online Editor. Every Tuesday, you can read about her cyclocross and editing exploits in her new column, The Girl with the Cowbell Tattoo. She’ll be looking at the content offered every week and mirroring her training and racing to reflect the advice from the experts … and then sharing how that advice turned out for her!
IN THE COWBELL FORUMS:
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