Cyclocross

BECOME A MORE POWERFUL CYCLIST? IT’S TIME FOR CYCLOCROSS…

From Rouler.cc

WORDS: JAMES WITTS

‘Tis the season for cherubs, cheese, Christmas cake, and cyclocross. Yes, up and down Great Britain and beyond, once passive fields are churned up into a quagmire by the knobbly tyres of (visually) beefed-up road bikes. It’s wonderful and exhausting in equal measure. “I’ve never tried it,” you ponder. Well, make this the winter that you do as you’ll enjoy a competitive boost to your 2024 season.

“But I haven’t a clue about the technical, psychological and physical benefits of this historic discipline of cycling that, legend has it, stretches back to the early 1900s and beyond as European road racers would race each other through tut farmer’s fields and over tut fences,” you ponder further in a rather laborious fashion. “Please tell me more with the help of current UCI World under-23 cyclocross champion Shirin van Anrooij, plus explain the transferable benefits to my 2024 road season.”

As you’ve pondered so nicely, we’re on it…

SCIENCE OF SPEED

Cyclocross dominates the cycling calendar in autumn and wintertime, and commonly plays out over a course that’s one to three kilometres long in races lasting between 40 and 60 minutes. The off-road parcours include sharp turns, steep banks, tree roots, sandpits and hurdles. Those latter two obstacles mean dismounting and running with a bike nestled on either shoulder is a much-needed skill. You also need the lungs, heart and legs of a thoroughbred as though the racing ‘only’ consumes an hour compared to a road race or sportive that can roll on for five or six hours, the intensity is all out.

How intense is highlighted by a 2017 study in the journal Sports and Exercise Medicine. A team led by Ryanne Carmichael, associate professor of exercise and sports physiology at Plymouth State University, USA, had eight experienced crossers take part in both a lab test and a cyclocross race.

In the lab, they pedalled to exhaustion on a cycle ergometer, the researchers measuring a number of metrics including lactate production at the increasing intensities. Broadly, the fitter you are, the higher your power output while keeping lactate levels low. In Carmichael’s study, heart-rate intensities were categorised as low, medium and high where low equated to lactate levels of 2mmol/litre or under up to high at 4mmol/l or over.

 

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How the Pacific Northwest became the nation’s cyclocross capital

From SeattleTimes.com

November is the worst month to get outside in the Pacific Northwest.

Hiking and mountain biking trails are rain-saturated messes. There isn’t enough snow to ski or snowboard. Howling winds threaten to tip your kayak or SUP as soon as you shove off the beach. Roads slick with wet leaves are just waiting to cause a cyclist to wipe out. Oh, and it gets dark before 5 p.m.

Don’t tell any of that to cyclocross racers, who will be lined up by the hundreds on Sunday for the Woodland Park GP, the grand finale of Western Washington cyclocross races. Last year, the North Seattle park hosted the largest cyclocross race in the country with 900 racers.

This year, organizers at MFG Cyclocross hope to crack the 1,000-person mark — in both racers and spectators — as a joyous celebration in our region’s most unpleasant month, bringing a party atmosphere with costumed racers, food trucks and plenty of bikes swooping through the muddy woods.

“It’s a great way to make crappy weather not so crappy, have a good time with friends and enjoy your community,” said Russell Stevenson, president of Off Camber Productions, which puts on the MFG Cyclocross series as well as the Wednesday Night World Championships mountain bike races at North SeaTac Park and the GRiT Adventure Gravel Ride near Cle Elum, Kittitas County.

Photo by Angel Santos on Unsplash

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The GREATEST Display Of Cycling Skill We’ve Ever Seen? | GCN Racing News Show

Thibau Nys has hit the big time with a win at the first UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup of the season, and he did it in some style, riding the steps and a 100% gradient climb on the technical Waterloo course. There were also more wins for Jasper Philipsen at the Tour of Türkiye and plenty of other news as the road racing season draws to a close.

Who Will Win The 2022 Cyclocross World Championships?

The Cyclo-cross World Championships return to the United States for the first time since 2013 and we’re set for a thrilling weekend. The women’s elite race looks set to be another amazing battle between Marianne Vos and Lucinda Brand, and the elite men will have a winner not named Van der Poel or Van Aert for the first time since 2014! The intriguing U23 and junior races and new team relay complete the line-up for what will be a must-not miss weekend of action in Fayetteville!

Cyclocross World Championships 2021 Preview | Van der Poel vs Van Aert, Brand vs Alverado + More

The UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships are taking place this weekend on the sandy beach of Oostende, Belgium. We look ahead to the pinnacle of the CX racing season to preview the course, the weather and the favourites to bring home a coveted rainbow jersey. In the Elite Men’s race, nobody but Mathieu van der Poel or Wout van Aert has won the race for the last 6 years, and both look to be on incredible form… In the Elite Women’s race the Dutch look set to continue their dominance of the discipline with hot favourite Lucinda Brand having her best season yet, although she will have to beat a long list of compatriots including the current world champion Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado. Jeremy and Marty chat about the race with a few pros to hear their thoughts, and who they think will win.

The Best Cyclocross Bikes

From Bicycling.com

Cyclocross has a few unique demands. Participating in the gritty, brilliant sport entails muddied-up drivetrains and the occasional tumble, so you’ll want a bike that’s purpose-built to handle the abuse and put you on the podium. Whether October mud ruined your drivetrain beyond repair or you’re ready to quit heckling your racer friends and saddle up yourself, these are the best cyclocross bikes you can get right now. (And until next season starts, these rides also make excellent gravel bikes, which are in short supply these days.)

What’s New in Cyclocross

The proliferation of gravel bikes as specialized rigs means manufacturers have returned to building race-specific cyclocross bikes with tight geometry and gobs of mud clearance. The 1x drivetrain has become ubiquitous due to its simplicity and lightness. Manufacturers like Campagnolo and Shimano introduced flat-mount disc brakes a couple of years ago, so you’ll see them more often than not on ’cross bikes. Finally, slick-looking internal cable routing is now the standard.

More Affordable Materials and Modernized Geometry

Carbon fiber is the frame material for mid-range and top-end cyclocross bikes, and you can find quality rides made with it at pretty low prices now. The Giant TCX Advanced Pro 2 has a carbon frame and will set you back just $2,500. Many brands continue to increase the bottom bracket drop (how far below the axles the BB sits) on their bikes, which can give them more versatile all-around handling. Manufacturers like Van Dessel are putting out bikes with drops between 68mm and 70mm, although you can still find a traditionally higher BB (and greater pedal clearance) on the 56mm-drop Fuji Altamira CX 1.1.

Photo by Nick Bolton on Unsplash

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What Is The Difference Between A Cyclocross Bike And A Gravel Bike

What is the difference between a gravel bike and a cyclocross bike? How can you tell them apart? Alex dives into both types of bicycle to explain how a gravel adventure bike differs from the CX, and what components and characteristics make them unique.

 

From GCN Tech

Beginner’s guide to cyclocross – get muddy, get fit (and get a new bike)

From Road.cc

By David Arthur

Welcome to road.cc’sinner’s guide to cyclocross. Read on for our top tips on what it is, where to do it and what kind of bike and kit you’ll need to get started.

Cyclocross is fun involving varying degrees of mud and pain. It can look a bit daunting if you’ve never tried it, but once you give it a go you’ll be hooked. Cyclocross is a great way to hone your riding skills and keep fit over the winter and it’s a brilliant excuse to treat yourself to a new bike. Here’s our guide to getting started, focusing on the basic kit you’ll need and what to do with it.

First things first, what exactly is cyclocross? It’s riding off-road on a modified road bike with knobbly tyres, lower gear ratios and mud clearance for tackling a variety of terrain. And mud. Lots of mud.

It’s long been the preserve of road cyclists spicing up their winter training, and in Europe it’s also a huge sport in its own right, with massively attended races, latterly it’s also been getting increasingly popular in the US and the scene in the UK is booming.

Cyclocross bikes though are even more popular than the sport itself and indeed the pure cross race bike has spawned a whole family of cross-type bikes from everything from the race to work, to long haul adventure riding, to simply messing about in woods, towpaths and trails all with a greater or lesser amount of race DNA in their genes. That’s because many of the attributes that make a bike so good for riding around a muddy field or through the woods are also ideal for so many other things too – like commuting.

And if you’ve got a bike with knobbly tyres, even if its for riding to work, it’d be a waste not to play in the mud at the weekends – whether you want to race or not. That’s why over the last few years we’ve seen a mushrooming of cyclocross sportives and a big rise in the numbers of riders messing about in the woods on bike with dropped bars.

Photo by Chris Kendall on Unsplash

 

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Can You Build A Cross Bike For Less Than $300

Cyclocross racing seems like a pretty expensive sport to get into. Riders often have 2 bikes for each race and bits get broken all the time! But does it have to break the bank? Jeremy is on a mission to see if we can build a ‘cross bike for fewer than 300 dollars!

 

5 Main Takeaways From 2020 Cyclocross World Championships

From Bicycling.com

By Molly Hurford

The airfield at Dübendorf, Switzerland, was covered with course tape, barriers, costumed spectators and the top cyclocross racers from around the world this weekend for the 2020 UCI Cyclocross World Championships. The racing kicked off on Saturday and finished on Sunday with six rainbow jerseys awarded.

No rain fell on Saturday despite dire predictions in the forecast, and the race became less about technique and more about roadie-style tactics. Sunday, though, had a bit more rain, which led to slick conditions for the junior men, under-23 women, and elite men, meaning more bike changes, more exciting slips and slides, and more mud.

Here are the top takeaways from the racing action this weekend.

It was a good day for fans of the young Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado of The Netherlands—who actually opted to race in the Elite Women’s race despite being eligible to race in the Under-23 race. Her gamble paid off and she shocked the crowd with her sprint finish to victory against her Dutch compatriot Annemarie Worst.

Throughout the season, Del Carmen Alvarado hadn’t been able to cinch a sprint finish, but after five laps of racing against Worst and Lucinda Brand, she managed to position herself perfectly on the finishing stretch and come around Worst in the last few meters for the win.

The victory was made even sweeter because last week, she lost the World Cup Overall to Worst after a devastating bobble in the final moments of the Hoogerheide World Cup race, so clearly, she was seeking a bit of payback and found it.

 

 

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