Munson Park Cyclocross

Last weekend I rode my second ever cyclocross race at Munson Park, in Monroe. The course turned out to be very different than I expected. Essentially, there was one piece of elevation change, a large "sledding hill". The course designers used it reasonably well, we must have climbed that stupid thing 6 or 7 times per lap, with one of the climbs being a runup.

The rest of the course was dead flat, which would have been OK, except that there were high winds that day (I heard reports later of gusts up to 40mph!) which made it all very tough.

I ended up finishing dead last of all of the finishers in my class (DFL is better than DNF, right?). Frankly, at the time, I was happy just to have finished at all.

The race highlighted a few training and bike setup points for me though. The first was that it exposed what I perceive to be my main weakness right now, which is the lack of ability to produce sustained power. This really shows up on flat portions of the course (especially if it happens to be a windy day!) as I watch my competition pull away from me. I think I'm simply not able to turn over big enough gears right now, I don't think my cadence is an issue. From everything I've read on the topic, I think this is primarily an issue of aerobic conditioning.

The second point has to do with crank length. I've been spending a lot of time on my road bike, with 170mm cranks, over the past few weeks (unfortunately, much of it on the trainer), and I've developed what I feel to be relatively good pedaling efficiency. When I rode my mountain bike, with 175mm cranks, at the race, my pedaling motion just felt a little off. Crank length is something I want to experiment with, but more on that later.