Awesome Weekend.

I've borrowed this title from my good friend AngryBee, as there's really no other way to describe it.

Firstly, I love cyclocross (CX). Second: It hurts. A lot.

I did my first CX race last Sunday in Shiga Prefecture. A few hours west of here; near Lake Biwa, and not too far from Kyoto. I also have a friend who lives near there so decided to make a road trip out of it; I went down Saturday evening, met friend, drank a lot, slept in car, then woke up at the crack of dawn to this view:
Luckily dawn cracks pretty late here in winter - this was 7am.

The race venue was just behind the prominent mountain in the picture above, so I headed back across the lake and found my way to Kibo-ga-oka park, it wasn't too hard to find, just join the stream of cars with bikes on the roof. Arriving in the carpark brought back many strong memories of MTB racing in years gone past, as this carpark was also full of cars, bikes and skinny people in lycra. This, however, was the first time I'd experienced that scene combined with one like this:

We had to walk across a sports field from the carpark to the course, and it was a massive sea of white. Even though I'd been told that it had snowed on the Friday before the race I wasn't really expecting this much snow however it was exciting to see - seems like I was going to get the full CX experience!

I trudged through the snow to register, found out I was early, so trudged back to the car and sat around for a bit before realizing (genius that I am) that I could ride the course for practice before registering, rather than wasting all my time sitting in my car. So I jump into my lycra, sort out my gear and bike, stuff the pockets of my fleece jacket with everything but the kitchen sink and head back over to the course. Jumping on, I find out it's frozen solid all over with plenty of frozen ruts from the riders who practised on Saturday. Fun!

Practice laps were ridden, and I found out that I had a surprising amount of traction, most of the time. The slippery bits snuck up real quick though, so it kept things interesting; one minute I'd be heading along smooth as silk, the next the back wheel would be trying to overtake the front...fun!

Before long it was time for the first races, so I traded the bike for the camera, and headed to the start line to get photos of Aki's race.
Aki's rolling start due to ice on the course in the Masters' category.

Aki rolling the steep bank. STIL (steeper than it looks)

After his race I had four hours of hanging around until my race so I grabbed more warm clothes, my camp chair and made a day of it. We were sitting right by the course in a spot that allowed us to see plenty of the action, and it was really fun to see all the races go by. As the day warmed up, so did the course, first the ice melted, then things turned to mud mud MUD!

My race was the second last, starting at 1:40, so promised to be one of the muddiest, and it turned out that my morning practice was only mildly helpful (but fun) as the conditions were so different that it seemed like a new course. Time to line up finally arrived, and Fu-san (a new bike friend also in my race) and I lined up and tried to stay warm until the start.
We very luckily had the support of an awesome bunch of friends, the SS-tomo-no-kai - an Osaka based group of singlespeeders - they really made the difference for me, showing me the ropes, feeding me, and even taking my jacket just moments before the start so I didn't have to fling it in the bushes and hope to find it later.

BANG! Off goes the start gun, and the first sprint is everything I've been told it would be (in CX, the start sprint is even more vitally important that in other cycling) and more.

Next post...the race...