The 2010 National Cyclocross Championships were held here this weekend. Cyclocross is a bike race that’s sort of like a steeple chase event. Racers ride lightweight road-type bikes on a difficult course of pavement, dirt, mud, water hazards, hills, steps, hurdles and other obstacles that inevitably require the racers to dismount and carry their bikes. It’s a brutal sport to compete in and a real blast to watch.
The race is multiple laps on a course crookeder than a plate full of guts:
Thousands of people lined the course:
A Cyclocross of this magnitude has a carnival feel to it. Lots of folks in bizarre costumes (about a dozen Santas, a Sasquatch, belly dancers, a guy trotting along the course in a speedo wearing a Mexican rassler mask and carrying an American Flag – I had to floss my eyes after that one - ), jugglers and drummers, both ad hoc and professional:
The Last Regiment Of Syncopated Drummers with a giant beer barrel in the back ground:
The course varies from winding curves and steep, dirt-surface climbs:
to slick as snot mud:
(skinny tires, not mtn. bike tires)
to flights of stairs:
Since the course is so serpentine this is a great spectator sport. At any spot along it you have a vantage of a couple different sections of very technical trail. The only thing lacking is explosions – these guys just bleed when they wipe-out.
Our own Peter Lazio competed in one of these a few weeks ago and finished 2nd in his age class. It was a pretty cool video.
