Starting

Starting. The simplest and most important part of the cross race. And one of the simplest to practice. I got thinking a bit, and on a good course, starting in the first three rows shouldn't have any bearing on getting the holeshot. Part of it is luck, but most of it is skill.

And Skill can be practiced.

This one very easily. That and i've mentioned it before. Everytime you stop, for a stop sign (because you SHOULD be obeying the laws of the road), stop light, waiting to cross a busy street. Ya know. Most people stop at least a few times every time they are on the bike. How do you turn the stops into cyclocross start drills? Go through the motions. I'm not suggesting rocketing your HR to max w/in 10 seconds like at the real start of the cross race. What i am suggesting is that you ingrain the motions of starting. Much like doing 1000 remounts/dismounts at walking pace ingrains that side of the skill set.

Keys:

• Always start with your dominate foot clipped in
• Clipped in Pedal/Crank always in the same spot. I prefer to have it at 2 o'clock position. But that's my preference.
• other foot on the ground.
• hands on the hood or drops (max leverage/control position - hands on tops = least control of the bike possible colin)
• Push off with ground foot as you stand up on clipped in foot.
• Get ground foot applying pressure on that first go round of that pedal
• You don't have to have it clipped in, know where to apply controlling pressure if you don't get it clipped in (practice) ie the center of the shoe

Goals:

• Fluidly be applying full power/control to the pedals w/in 1 revolution.
• Beat most everyone else to the bottleneck. (i kinda like the school of let someone else lead and suck wheel as much as possible but after strangling myself with the tape - maybe not so good idea)
  

Trackstands might help you if someone eats it in the course and ya get bottled up. But, if you master the start, you decrease the likely-hood that you are stuck being a bottle neck.


While on the topic of cross specifically, the top mount brakes. Oh the holy war that has begun between colin and gewilli. Colin in his second(?) year of racing cross, GeWilli going back to 1997. not that duration of doing it has anything to do with it, and granted there should be an * next to my 1997 racing since, because well i had a few years off (2000-2005 were no racing years). Anyway. Colin's comment about me getting beaten by a whole bunch of guys using them prompted this retort: Well colin, if those guys took the top mount levers off, i fear they would have beaten me by even more. Sure. Mahk and a few pros use em. Most don't. My unscientific study suggests that. Also, the whole "i need a different hand position" is bogus too. Most if not all the people who use that defense typically never ever ever ride in the drops. The Tops afford you the least control of the bike. Sure there are times when you want to unweight the front end as much as possible and the tops are the place to be (flying through sand and what not) but in those situations you don't need brakes.

Lets pull a MTB parallel. Bar width. Colin probably is too young to remember the trend of running bars as short as possible. Basically the mechanic would shove the shifters and brake levers as far in as possible, measure for grip length and cut off anything that was beyond that. Talking like 18" bars. How popular are they now? How long did that fad last? What is the current trend and why. Wider for more control/comfort. Hmmm. Wider hand positions give you more control? No way. So, why put levers close together, reducing your control of the bike?

What ever you do. Do it because you believe it. Do it because you realize some benefit. Don't do ANYTHING just because someone else says it is THE way to go. try it, if it works? great. if not? at least you are wiser and smarter and have more knowledge to base your next choice on.

Learn. Absorb. Be a student of life, of everything you do. That said. There are always people smarter, more knowledgable and more experienced than you, you can learn from someone. But, what they have to say may not work for you.

And IIRC it was solobreak or ctodd or someone i forget who it was, they said Mahk M said: "If you can't do something 10/10 times in practice, don't do it in a race." I think referring to bunny hopping or some such trick. And that's a damn good thing to remember.

Peace
G