What you should do this fall if you’re not into cyclocross

Fall is here, which means an endless stream of #crossiscoming posts on Instagram. It also means constant pressure from at least some of your friends to leave the mountain bike at home and try out a race on drop bars and skinny tires. But what do you do if you’re feeling more #crosscanwait than #CXFever?

Editor Matt Pioro spoke to Coach Peter Glassford about the looming cyclocross season for the Canadian Cycling Magazine Podcast. Glassford says that, after a long mountain bike season, it’s OK to not feel stoked on skinny tires. There’s plenty of other things to do this fall, anyway, right?

Here’s Pioro’s conversation with the coach about why you should feel just fine saying no to cyclocross.

Canadian Cycling Magazine: I have a question, and it’s not really my own. But this is something I’ve heard. It goes like this: “I’m just not that stoked on cyclocross. It’s Fall and people are going on about cross, but I’m not feeling it.” Is cross the only thing worth doing in the fall?

Peter Glassford: I definitely Identify. Molly, my wife, comes from a cyclocross background. I really like cyclocross skills but the racing’s never been … I’m just not great at short term stuff. I also really dislike the cold and just being out all day in the cold so there’s a lot of reasons ‘cross and me just don’t agree. On top of that, I’ve probably already raced pretty hard all through mountain bike season so I really just don’t feel like racing.

What I really want to do is just go out and do fun mountain bike rides and enjoy the fall. All the leaves are down and it’s really beautiful. Also, I don’t have goals for 5-6, or maybe more, monthsso it’s a good chance to just go ride for fun, see some friends, do some night riding. It’s a really cool time of year.

And for anyone with kids, they’re back to school and they have sports going on, or there’s year-end type stuff at work. It’s a different time of year for different people. For some people, cyclocross is their main season and that’s awesome, but it’s not for everyone. That’s why we have all these cycling disciplines.

I laughed when you said “there’s all these different fun things you can to.” Someone once said to me, “Do you like cyclocross?” and I said yes, and he said, “Well then you’re doing it wrong.” That always plays into the whole suffering narrative and you know, it is a tough go – for those 45 minutes to an hour you’re on the limit. So, yeah, I get it if you’re stoke isn’t high on such efforts.

And it’s another bike, too, it’s just not in some people’s wheelhouse. I think it’s a great discipline. There’s the skill component, the intensity is really really good. I think it is a great experience to have to ride in conditions like that because some of the craziest conditions I’ve been in have been on the road. Road is hard at times, and terrifying, and mountain biking certainly has its share of mud. So there’s a lot of cross-over, if you will, from cyclocross.

I think it’s a great discipline to try. I think the weekly cross practices are super social, and very welcoming usually, so if you can get out to any of those, even on your mountain bike. Now with road bikes, with discs, a lot of road bikes even would be pretty suitable even just to try it out and get a feel for dismounts and that sort of stuff.

I think the other thing is that cyclocross doesn’t have to be a weekend, super intense thing. It could just be you’re Wednesday night group ride from the road is just a Wednesday night cyclocross practice. Low key, you don’t have to do intensity pieces if you don’t want – it could just be the skills part and then hanging out.

That’s a really good point. Choose the parts that you like, you can do that. You can just do what you want with your fall.

Yeah, and I was going to say, the other thing is that when you’re looking at – and I’ll just use me as an example – but if I’m looking towards a March/April/May next year goal, then you’re starting to get into that Base 1 work I love, because it’s all cross training. That initial period of training where were just sort of building.

With a busy person, we don’t have quite so much time, volume-wise, but probably there’s some benefit to be had from low intensity training. But it could be very mixed modal. So there could be some cross country skiing, some running, some hiking certainly some strength training, core and yoga type stuff as well. So go back to those fundamentals of training, which we forget sometimes. It’s always race race race, Zwift Zwift Zwift, just always hitting it so hard. And you definitely see it more and more in clients that come to me and they’re just so tapped on that high intensity. So the reasons to be careful in the fall are plentiful. Remember why you enjoy riding and training.

What do you think you’ll be doing this fall?

My wife and I are doing a long distance run at the beginning of September. She’s going for a Fastest Known Time (FKT), so we’ll be doing a bunch of running. But after that, I’ll probably be riding until Blue Mountain, our downhill place here, is done for the season. I’ll working on my speed and descending skill on my mountain bike. Once that’s done, just try go out on those leafy trails and have fun with friends.