London Phoenix

Various calendars have been published, so I pulled together this handy guide to local and selected national and international dates.
Any errors are all my own, so don't book a flight to Iowa City without double checking the dates.

Has our LCCA promotion moved from 7 Oct to 16 Sept. ?

... and do we have a venue yet?

Yes and yes.

Crystal Palace

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cool. Glad that worked out - should be mega.

Calendar revised.

Thinking of having a go at cylocross this season, How gnarly are the courses?? Think I could do with endurance bike (Trek Domane disk) with fatter tires?

Not that knarly tbh - more about bike skills in the slippery stuff and getting on and off a bike quickly. Domaine with fatter tyres should be fine - look at the challenge tyres and pick for the conditions.

I do have to warn you though - it’s highly addictive.

What's the widest tyre you can get on a Domane?

Who cares? - it’s all about attitude. Rode 4 hours with 20 triathletes today and when we hit 50m of gravelly stuff it was hilarious.

Matthew might if all he can manage is a 25mm GP4000. Not sure that's gonna be much fun!

The nearest race to north London today was the Wessex League so I headed down the M4 to Reading. In homage to my first visit to Reading for the festival 26 years ago, we had Teenage Fanclub, Lemonheads and Mudhoney on the car stereo. Pretty cool course with a couple of steep climbs and a fast descent, and lots of woodland and technical rubbish thrown in. Unlike the Eastern League, the big numbers are in the V40/Junior race rather than than the V50 so I lined up alongside 99 other dudes. Unfortunately, having ridden the Wessex League only once in my life, I wasn't gridded and started on about row 10 (so probably 70/80 people in front. I couldn't even see the front of the race. Anyway I passed a good number of people but the first couple of laps were slow going on the narrow bits and the hills which were rideable with a clear but obviously at the back of the race there was no chance to try that until about lap 3. Lots of overtaking and, as no surprise to anyone who has seen me at a CX race, I finished better than I started so I finished nearer the front than the back. However, I sense the podium line-up were all having a shower by the time I crossed the line. Good fun and organised by nice people but no tea and cake as far as I could see which I thought was piss poor.

Should have come to Brighton for the London League then. We had an organic food stall selling olives and popcorn. But no real food. Sometimes I despair. Like during the race where the rather horizontal nature of the course exposed my continued lack of fitness. With no technical features to break things up, my only trip to the floor was when a back marker jumped in my way and knocked me off.

Somehow despite the rather sonorous nature of the course, one rider managed to knock himself out cold and another broke a collarbone. Maybe it was boredom.

Herne Hill this weekend but I’m Commissaire so will be watching everyone else do it instead.

Milton Keynes yesterday in the Central League along with Neil who did V50. Kev Carter, formerly of this parish also rode and won the V50 in the V40 race on an MTB category. No, really.

Anyway, wet and cold so perfect really. The only fly in the ointment being that I'm getting old, am slow and was utterly shite. The cherry on the cake being that I slid out on the last lap and lost a bunch of places. Not as embarrassing as the chap in the video doing the rounds who tries to remount his bike and misses completely* but not one to tell the grandkids about. Onwards.

*I can empathise because I did the same thing at the National Champs at few years ago. I don't think anyone filmed that but a lot of people saw it as it happened and laughed at me.

formerly of this parish also rode and won the V50 in the V40 race on an MTB category

Say what? There's an MTB category?