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Today was Haughcross, a summer cyclocross race as part of the Aberdour Festival. For me, it was a chance to try racing again after a gap of nearly two years. For training, I mixed up regular laps of Arthurs Seat with longer fast-paced rides out to Cramond and finished with a little bit of sprint intervals. Having spectacularly hit the wall in my last race, I paid attention to what I was eating – lots of food + liquid in the last few days, plenty of carbs, finishing with a PBJ sandwich 3h before the race and some lucozade energy drink up until 1h to go.

The course was fast and flowing, laid out with tape on the large meadow next to the Silver Sands beach. Two sets of barriers, lots of hairpin turns, and a nice mix of faster turns (where you could go wide) and faster turns (where going wide was a bad idea) and one burn which you had to dismount and leap over.

As I’ve now learned several times, there’s a big difference between being “pretty fit” and being “race fit”. Straight from the start, it was clear I was going to be competing for perhaps the last 4 places. I was wary of starting out too fast, but got past a few riders on the first two laps. However, my heartrate was 167+ and I knew I had to dial things back to have a chance of completing an hour of racing. So I slowed a bit. My pace dropped off a lot towards the end of the race, but at least I avoided hitting the wall. Later in the race, I’d keep well out of the way of the leaders as they lapped me, but actually each of these micro-rests helped me last too.

I fared better in the muddier races I did in 2011. Today’s race was fast and flowing. I noticed that I made up time primarily going over the obstacles, and running uphill, but lost time everywhere else. I wonder if the 2011 races had more of the technical stuff that perhaps I’m better at. Today’s race seemed to be more about speed, acceleration and carrying momentum round corners.

I’m astonished by how fast the rest of the field is. In some ways, I don’t particularly mind dicing for 3rd last pace because I know that merely finishing the race pushes me harder than almost anything else I’ve tried before. I guess it’d be nice to have a crystal ball which told me how much of performance is about training, and how much is genetics. In other words, if I quit my job, trained every day, would I be winning these races? Or finishing half way down the field? Unfortunately, I know that Bradley Wiggins is about the same weight and height as I am, so that’s one excuse ruled out!

Warm day, so unicycled from Portobello to Leith docks, then up the Water of Leith to Inverleith – route on endomondo. It’s been a while since my last ride, but that often helps my technique a bit. Plenty of kerb hopping, rolling mounts, dodgy surfaces (the cobbled car park behind Brittania Spice is good fun).

Did another 4 mile-r this weekend – along the waterfront at Silverknowes and back. It was pretty windy, which isn’t a big problem even on a uni, but does mean that you can’t “switch off” as much as usual. However, I did try unicycling with my eyes closed for 10 seconds, and managed that fine. I spend a fair while on some soft grassy land starting to practise one-footed pedalling, but it never really came together. On a more positive note, I can do rolling mounts, jump mounts and 90 degree jump mounts without really thinking nowadays.

I made more progress in my attempts to do Proper Wheelies this morning. I was riding up a slight incline, and manage to do a wee bit of steering correct whilst the wheel was up in the air. Normally, I just veer to the side and bail. The magic difference this time was that I was looking far into the distance, rather than staring at my front wheel.

Steering is funny like that. It works best when you don’t think about it. Just look where you want to do and you end up naturally doing corrections to keep you in that direction – even whilst on one wheel, it seems. It works the other way around too. It’s really hard to not steer towards something you’re looking at – target fixation.

There’s an item which has remained stubbornly unticked on my life ‘todo’ list for a long time – learning to (properly) wheelie on a bicycle. I’m not talking about popping the front wheel up into the air for a second. i mean a proper stable wheelie-as-long-as-you-want affair. Given that I can now ride a unicycle, it seems somewhat inconsistent that I still can’t do this.

One thing which unicycling has taught me is that stubborn persistence reaps rewards. If you actually put in the hours of practise, and refuse to give up then eventually … eventually .. things will start to click into place. For me, wheelies definitely fall into this category. I think I’ve done four hour-long practise sessions now. Each time, little bits start to come together and make more sense. On the first time, I realised that there was a transition into a more stable balance point when you get the wheel high enough. On the second time, I realised that raising the front wheel purely via pedal power (and no pulling on the bars) stopped me falling to the side. On the third time, I realised that you’ve only got a half-pedal stroke in which to apply enough torque to get the wheel up and so you need a big burst rather than a steady push. And finally tonight, I realised that dragging your brakes and letting them go just at the start of the pedal downstroke means you spend the whole downstroke at maximum torque as opposed to ramping up to max torque – just like what jumbo jets do when they spin up their engines with the brakes on before takeoff.

I can occasionally manage to wheelie for maybe 10 metres, so I’ve not totally nailed it yet but I’m getting there. Just need more practise.

Top tips:
– Read this article. It speaks the truth. You don’t need to precompress suspension, or do any big pre-transfer of your weight.
– Lift the front wheel by pedal power, not by arm power. You need a sudden burst of pedal power. Pedal against your brakes so that you’re really having to force the pedals round, then release the brakes for a sudden surge. If you find yourself falling to one side immediately, make sure you’re not doing arm-pulling.
– I used middle chain ring and either lowest or second-lowest gears. Anything higher and you don’t have the leverage to rotate the bike.
– Have your seat at a normal height to allow you to pedal normally. Sit toward the back of the seat, but you don’t need to be hanging off the back (unlike doing a manual, where you don’t have pedal-power to rotate the bike).
– Do this a million time until you start to get familiar with how the bike balances with the wheel up in the air.

Ahaha, I just figured out the mount used in the unispin tutorial video, eg. at 1m10s. It looks like Jason puts his foot on the pedal at 6 o’clock, rolls the unicycle forward so that the pedal is at 9 o’clock, then jumps onto it. But that doesn’t work – I tried it! Rather, you gradually transfer your weight onto the lower pedal at the same time as rolling it from 6 to 9. The momentum of the “roll” acts to oppose the increasing weight you’re putting on the pedal, giving you time to get your body up and over the centre of the wheel before the weighted pedal finally defeats the momentum of the roll.

I’ve not mastered it yet. I can get onto the pedals, but usually end up in the dead 6-12 position. I once managed to roll into a seat-out hop though, so I can see where I’m going. Just more practise required. Seat-out hopping, which felt completely mental the first time I tried it, is starting to get better too.

This morning I found a useful square of tarmac just off the cyclepath – slightly sloping, large enough to practise wide turns and with a handy sloping kerb which offered gradually increasing drop-offs.

I’ve figured out turns. They’re not very graceful – more like a succession of lurches – but they’re effective. It’s just a case of leaning/looking where you want to go, then some quick pedal work to make sure the wheel stays under you. Turning left is much easier than turning right – probably because I’ve been practising right-foot idling so much.

I did a mix of other stuff – the rough woodland path again, some speed bumps, and a bit of hopping. I managed to ride off from a side mount successfully once (lost count of unsuccessful attempts). Freemounting is becoming second nature – so glad I learned that last year.

I still haven’t nailed idling. I’m beginning to think that practising in my corridor isn’t working – the walls are too close, so there’s no space to change direction. I’ve started practising outside, which also means I have to learn how to mount straight into an idle.

My calendar is telling me that today’s cyclocross race is the last one for me in 2011. A diary clash takes out my ‘local’ race at Meadowmill, the championship race at Auchentoshan requires a full race license (£36) which is too pricey, and the final race is on Mull in December – not an attractive proposition, given the weather last December.

I’ve had a good time in my first season of cyclocross. I completed all four races I entered – 3 rounds of SCX plus the Hallocross race. I’ve learned lots about racing – momentum, pacing, fuelling. I got plenty of practise stripping down my bike and rebuilding it in between races. I built my wheels from scratch and raced on them. And last, but not least, no injuries!

The limiting factor was always race fitness. Sure, technique and bike make some difference. But ultimately I struggled to maintain pace across the whole hour. I’d set out trying to conserve energy and be sensible, but would always fade in the last quarter of the race.

It’s mindblowing to see how fast the top guys are. They’re fast everywhere. And they’re as fast on the final lap as they are on the first. Given the not-insignificant amount of training I did this year between Alpe d’Huez and SCX, it’s sobering to see people delivering racing laps 50% faster than I can do.

Still, I definitely did a lot of fun cycling in 2011. Alpe d’Huez: done. Cyclocross: done.

A cool slideshow from the dark and spooky Hallocross race – I’m in there at 3:04.

This evening’s race was Hallocross, whizzing around in the dark around the grounds of Craigmillar Castle. The course was great – and not muddy! A high-speed grassy descent after the line, then a long steady slog to return to almost exactly the same spot. A loong grassy straight lead into a forest section – sweeping side to side, up and down. The lap ended with a fast downhill on gravely path .. and then a corresponding climb back up. All very flow-y and rideable.

Riding in the dark was great. I had one torch which was pipe clamp’d to my handlebars, and another torch attached to my helmet with a bit of inner tube and some cable ties. A total of 520 lumens, for a total of £55, and it runs of AA batteries too. The darkness made the forest section really fun – it felt like flying through a tunnel.

I lost count of how many laps I did – I think probably six – and didn’t bother with my HRM (cos it was dark).

Over the last couple of days, I’d completely stripped down my bike to get all the mud out of it. I also switched to a new rear wheel which I’d built a while ago. Unfortunately, whilst I’d trued it, I hadn’t put enough tension on the spokes and on the ride to work some loosened off. So I had to nip home mid-afternoon to do a sub-15 minute wheel change .. moving tyre/tube, cassette and brake disc across between wheels. Fortunately, my bike worked fine during the race. There’s a moral there somewhere …