Bikes and Code

The traditional last race of the OBC Eastern Ontario Cyclocross Series is at Mooney’s Bay in Ottawa. A gigantic (to the gravitationally challenged) hill dominates the park while most of the rest of the park is fairly flat. Being the last race of the year, in Ottawa, in late November, early December, there is also often snow.

Last year, there was about a foot and a half and I took the path of cowardice and stayed at home. It seemed a good idea at the time, but a couple of months later, I found myself regretting it. Races like that are the stuff legends are made of. At the very least, they make decent war stories to tell and re-tell. I made a vow to myself that if there was a snowy race this year, I would definitely do it.

If I haven’t mentioned it in the past, I am a fair weather cyclist for the most part. I feel no shame in admitting this. I do not gain enjoyment from going out for a long ride in the rain. Even in the summer, if the weather is terrible, I am more likely to ride on the trainer for an hour or two than go outside. This is mostly pragmatic. My wrenching abilities are horrific and I have a general lack of manual dexterity. Bad weather almost always means you have to spend more time re-greasing and cleaning all sorts of fun parts of the bike. Since I like my gear to be at least in decent shape, I feel that the wiser course of action is generally to keep my bike out of the worst of the rain and it will generally last longer.

The point of this is that as a fair weather cyclist, I spent my few training hours in the last week or so indoors. Not outdoors in the snow. And in previous years, when I wasn’t going to ride in the snow anyhow, well, I didn’t ride in the snow. Today, there was somewhere between 6 and 10 cm of snow on the ground, this was far more than I had ever ridden in. This snow covered the entire course, save for a couple of very short sections in the parking lots.

I was able to come to the following conclusion: riding in snow is very difficult.

That is, of course, when you can ride. Much of the first lap was spent running. Later laps riding the entire thing was in order, but still. The bike does not go where you point it. If you get off balance slightly, the bike washes out from underneath you. You can actually go pretty good when you are on the hard pack snow in the middle of the course, but if you veer off that 4 inch wide trail, watch out. In terms of time, one section that I was clearing in about 45 seconds when I stayed on the little packed down bit took me nearly two minutes when I slid off of it. In hindsight I should have just stopped and put the bike back on the narrow bit, rather than try to ride back onto the hard-pack ridge, but at the time I was in pain and not thinking too terribly clearly.

Ah well. Last race of the season. I have some epic blisters on my hands from something, my lower back is basically locked up from all the pulling and pushing trying to mash the bike through the deeper bits of snow. But the bike is cleaner than it was before I started, so that’s good. I used some good old MEC brand cold weather chain oil and there is still a nice thin film of the stuff, so that’s awesome. I’ll just have to pull apart a few other bits of the bike, regrease everything and let it collect dust for a couple of months.

Probably my last OBC Cross race as well. Though if we end up coming out this way some fall, I will without question bring my cross bike out to enjoy the series again.

The biking season in Ottawa is pretty much finished for those of us fair weather cyclists. There will be a a final ‘cross race this weekend at Mooney’s Bay and that will be it for me. It’s time to wind down a bit, take some time off the bike and get ready for next year.

I’ve been on the bike about three times since the last race, all inside on the trainer. While riding on the trainer isn’t too terrible, it does get old fast. Still though, it only generally takes me a week or two without riding before I’m feeling that I need to get back in the saddle. I find that planning out the next season during period of low intensity or no intensity is often the best time. Energy is up, I’ve forgotten the pain of training and am only looking forward to the next set of races.

Next season is going to be a different one for me. Hillary and I will be moving to Vancouver in the next couple of months, so I am going to have to find entirely new series of races to keep me busy. My long term goal is to do the BC Bike Race in 2010, so next year is going to be my return to mountain biking to start getting ready for it. It sounds like my season is going to start out with The Salty Dog and, if I can get myself registered (sells out quickly I am told), the Test of Metal. It will be fun to get back into mountain biking more seriously again. My technical skills will be pretty rusty I think, but I’m hoping those will come back as the season progresses.

I’ve already been told that I will have to spend a weekend or two in the Rossland area and ride the Seven Summits as well as several other trails in the area that are best described as epic.

I’m fairly excited about road racing as well. There is a pretty impressive March series of road races put on by Team Escape Velocity that I’m planning on doing my best to attend most of. That and I fully intend on riding several of the major mountain passes that I did in 2007 in the cross Canada trip again. Hope-Princeton is definitely a doable ride and if I can talk some people into it, there are lots of good day trips in and around the Okanagan.

Cyclocross is a sport of bad weather. Cold winds, rain and the threat of snow is taken in stride and often times, the weather plays an important role in a race. The second race at the Kanata Rec center was one of those. The temperature was hovering around the freezing mark with 30km/h+ winds and some light sleet. Or perhaps you could call it heavy snow, it really doesn’t matter.

This was the first race at the Kanata course where we were not sent up the gravel climb up the side of the main hill (according to my GPS, that climb hits about 14% at parts). Instead, the main elevation gain was up the other side of the hill and running. Even more entertaining was the fact that immediately after the run up, a pair of muddy switchbacks were presented. After scoping out the route through the switchbacks, I ended up electing to not remount the bike until I was through the first two. Most people tried to ride, but I found that running would tend to move me up a place. Considering I am an absolutely terrible runner, this was saying something. I also did not fall, which was nice. Some say that in cyclocross, if you don’t fall, you are not trying hard enough. I do not subscribe to that point of view yet. I much prefer to keep the rubber down for the time being, I don’t bounce as well as I used to.

Personally, it wasn’t my greatest race. I slogged through it, but it was far from stellar. I got lapped by the top three guys and that was about it. Second best result this year I suppose, though it was a longer lap, so perhaps not. I evidently just wasn’t with it mentally. I’d hit the long into the wind power sections and just wasn’t able to dial it up as high as I usually can. Ah well, they can’t all be good races.

I most likely will not be attending the Upper Canada Village race next week, which means one more to go this season. Too short it is, but the weather is just getting more and more unpleasant.

A code post is in the works, this week’s topic is going to be a ramble on how I feel about how Java has changed since I started using it in 1998.