Last night was Wed Worlds #1. I rode something like 20 miles in the grass and I lost at least 3 lbs in sweat.
Mediocre Training Tip™: Indian Food. Recovery food of the gods. The culmination of millions of years of human culinary ingenuity for people living where it is hot as balls.
The fact that one races at all means that there is some level of competitive streak in which he or she wants to measure up against some people or persons. If zero shits were truly given about placement the logical conclusion would be that racing is complete nonsense. I think some leeway can be given to those people who do things as an accomplishment (see W101, etc), but CX does not fall into that purview.
As someone who has gone from reasonably successful in cx to completely pack fodder, it is not the distance from the pointy end that makes it hard to stomach. It is getting beat by people that you would never imagine losing to on your worst day ever. The day that someone beats you that you could not imagine ever losing to will be harder than losing to the guy you beat by 30 seconds on average last year.
Yes, Finishing an event like the W101 is an accomplishment unto itself whereas finishing a cross race is almost as impressive as pulling up to the drive through, ordering a Big Mac, then remembering to pick it up at the window. Technically to finish a cross race all you have to do is complete 1 lap.
Racing cross without pushing yourself or caring at all about how you finish makes no sense to me either. If you’re gonna’ go through the trouble of entering a cross race, why not give it your all? Accepting our fate as mediocre doesn’t mean that we can’t be extremely competitive in the moment or that we don’t care about how we finish a race. You can take racing seriously even if you don’t let training take over your life.
I would argue that it’s not a choice of either or (i.e. either commit to a serious training regimin OR don’t take yourself seriously) but one of relative contribution to your General Happiness Quotient (GHQ). As the wise old sage
@pearl says, (and I’m paraphrasing) you sum up all the things that impact GHQ and make that value determination. Sure you got beat by 30 seconds a guy you never would have imagined losing to, but are you 1) a happier person than you were when you won Whirlybird and were on the podium a whole lot in 2010? and 2) do you still enjoy all of the ritual, pomp and self-induced-suffering of racing cross? How much weight to you place on that relative to other things that contribute to your GHQ?
And not to get all judgy, but what about that schlubb who beat you by 30 seconds? What's his GHQ on a absolute basis? What weight does he place on beating your ass in his own GHQ calculation?
Brass nipples on everything forever.
Nipples! I can’t disagree that brass nipples have greater longevity but I’m going to keep on using Aluminum for my race wheels. Always. Alu nipples save about 20g per wheel of rotating mass. People far less mediocre at physics and math than I am have calculated there to be a couple watt savings every time you accelerate, which I am told happens a lot in Cyclocross. I need all the watts I can buy. Those spokes would have been eff'd regardless of nipple type.
Only mediocre people use thesaurus.com
#doughnutiscoming
