Background light, cyclocross style. Now on the return from a quick trip to Belgium. Doing the legwork for EuroCrossCamp, some networking for UCI CX Commission, and gaining some closure on my book. While the real show doesn’t start for another month, there’s plenty going on, even in August.

Had a great visit with newly retired 3x World Champ Erwin Vervecken. Always interesting to see how pros handle their training/racing workload stoppage. Erwin is quite happily busy with his young family and, as I gradually learned, now a key cog in the whole pro cyclocross structure. Working for the Golazo empire (Golazo owns big Belgian cx races, and much more), Erwin is now their advisor for cyclocross start money, as well as a sort of technical director for several big events. When you put it all together, you see exactly how things work “in the business”, shall we say.

Got a quick call in to Lars Boom, racing in the Hamburg classic and then on to north Holland for Eneco Tour start where he was on the leader board for a long time before eventually finishing 3rd in the Prologue. Living the ProTour life. And, he said he was going to race some ‘cross in December, from early December through Dutch Nationals. It will be great to have him back for a few races.

Spent time in Izegem working on EuroCrossCamp logistics. For everything to go smoothly come December, quite a few logistical details require dedicated time and energy. Pretty excited about Camp #8–the number of riders hungry for international cyclocross and their level seem to increase each season. Obviously, with Louisville 2013, we need to ratchet up everything. We need to be ready.

Always informative to pay a visit to Sven Nys too. This time, he showed me around his newly finished home, complete with BMX track for 8 yr old Thibau in the back yard. Pretty nice digs to say the least. Exercise room. Equipment room. You get the picture. And what is Sven doing for “background lighting” before MTB Worlds in Canada in early September followed by the competitive cyclocross circus?

Aug 7: Ride 5 hrs; Aug 8: Ride 1 hr; Aug 9: 5 hrs; Aug 10: Run 40 min; Ride 3 hrs; Aug 11: 1.5 hr CX; 2.5 hr MTB; Aug 12: Ride 3 hrs; Aug 13: Ride 2 hrs; Aug 14: Ride 1.5 hrs; Aug 15: Race 200 km.

We talked about hearing that Stybar was doing big hours in St. Moritz (one day the Zd-Man climbed the Stelvio twice!). Sven says he’s banking on more intensity and less big hourage as he preps for this season.

For cyclocrossers, August can seem a bit of a lull. But, if you look in the background, you’ll see plenty of legwork.

Look for an update on EuroCrossCamp selection etc. soon.

Onward.

GP

Warming up in the team tent

In Issue #9 of Cyclocross Magazine, inbeded reporter Nathan Phillips gives readers a rare inside glimpse into life at EuroCrossCamp. He sees it all from the thick mud of Diegem to the marvelous meals that Els fires up to the witty banter with The Fox. Check it all out in the latest issue. Here’s a sneak peak of it on the Cyclocross Magazine website.

You’ll also find of scanned copy of it right here on the website.

One item to correct in the article is that we see Yannick Eckmann up on the podium.  Robin is his brother.  Although fast on a bike, Robin wasn’t at ECXC this past year.

Junior World CX Champs, Zolder, Belgium, 2002. Where are they now?

1. Kevin Pauwels

3. Zdenek Stybar

18. Sebastian Langeveld

28. Lukas Fluckiger

35. Andy Schleck

38. Lars Boom

40. Brent Bookwalter

In each meeting, I’ve been impressed with the workability and chemistry within our group. Lots of  good discussion, both concentrated and free-wheeling, on the sport, its rules, vision and character. Having the UCI’s database to study stats from World Cups is another plus. You get a good sense of context when you have the opportunity to view the simulations and information. The final step in the process is approval by the UCI Management Board in June.

And, yes, for you inquiring race fans out there, I did witness an historic rarity during the late Saturday afternoon portion of our meetings. Shortly before 5 pm we took a coffee break to watch the end of Milan-San Remo. During the action, I looked across the table and there it was–Sven eating a piece of cake. Not to worry. He told me–with a wink– it was the final weekend of his three weeks vacation away from the bike. Part of that he spent in Austria skiing with his family. But he told me the honeymoon was over. Training started again this week, Monday morning, 0900.

Next up in April–the USAC Cyclocross Summit in Colorada Springs. Should be good with organizers and USAC staff going through all issues pertinent to building the sport in the US. In conjunction, I’ll provide a general report of the UCI meeting as well.

UCI Cyclocross Commission 2010 (l to r): Jan Prop (NED), Geoff Proctor (USA), Sven Nys (BEL), Peter VandenAbeele (UCI Director), Simon Burney (GBR), Brian Cookson (President-GBR).

Cyclocross never sleeps. –Neil Young

1 Jannick Geisler (Ger) Harburger RG
2 Wenzel Böhm-Gräber (Ger) RSC Wiesbaden
3 Jasha Sütterlin (Ger) RSV Edelweiß Achkarren
4 Yannick Eckmann (Ger) SV Kirchzarten
5 Julian Lehmann (Ger) Harburger RG

Joe Dombrowski pushing through the mud. Photo Courtesy of Lyne Lamoureux

Joe Dombrowski (Haymarket Bicycles/HomeVisit) get’s interviewed on In The Crosshairs.  Joe and InTheCrosshairs discuss everything ‘cross related at EuroCrossCamp including the House, Race day food and funny events.  Maybe the best, funniest event of the Camp, according to Dombrowski was a little elbow thrown by Jerome Townsend. “At Noordzecross in Middlekerke, Jerome Townsend was rolling in fifth into the first corner. He was elbowing some Belgian dude who was yelling at him. He looked over and it was Sven Nys.”

Check out the entire interview on In The Crosshairs and enjoy the interesting insight to ECXC VII.

Zach McDonald just finished up his third trip to Belgium with EuroCrossCamp. Photo Courtesy of Matthew J. Clark/www.Str8films.com

Jamie Mack of Cyclocross Magazine had a talk with EuroCrossCamp Alum Zach McDonald at the end of ECXC VII.  Read the entire article on CXMagazine.com

Cyclocross Magazine has had the pleasure of talking to a few of the younger racers that attended EuroCrossCamp this year. As the camp winds down, I spoke with one of the camp veteran’s, Zach McDonald, almost a year after we last interviewed him after his break-out performance at the 2009 Roubaix World Cup. At 19 years of age, McDonald has been known to ‘cross fans for a couple of years now; he’s already been through the camp three times, twice as a junior and this year as a U23.

In 2008, Zach swept through the Junior races at the Mercer and Portland USGP’s and then capped the season by claiming the US Junior National Title in Kansas City. McDonald used the camp, as he had the previous year, for experience and as a strength-building warm-up on the way to the World Championships.

2009 saw similar success throughout the year. Local wins and podiums at USGP’s and other races indicated that McDonald was adapting well to the new surroundings after stepping up to U23. Unfortunately, an early mechanical would take away McDonald’s chances at the U23 national title, but a strong showing in the Collegiate race put another national championship jersey on McDonald’s back.

As he has the past two years, McDonald again made the trip across the Atlantic to the house in Izegem, Belgium that serves as the USA Cycling base in Europe. I caught up with McDonald at the tail end of his stay, just before he left for an extended training trip to Mallorca, Spain with Troy Wells, to see how the camp was treating him.

Justin Justin Lindine racing the icy thread of a line at the GP Groenendaal. © Bart Hazen

For the last race of the camp we made the foray into the Netherlands for the GP Groenendaal. Those of us still left to race were faced with snowy, icy conditions that mother nicely decided to bookend our trip with. Snow for arriving, snow for leaving, and lots of Belgian mud in between. The course was tricky to say the least. Had it been dry it would have been pretty interesting with far more swoopy turns then any of the other courses we had raced on. However, with the combination of a few inches of fresh snow and the ground being frozen solid, it turned into a race of fewer errors and who was the most aggressive passer. There were few wide-open sections and even fewer good lines. It was like racing on one ribbon of very frozen single track where the corners were all lined with ice. After a crash in the start stretch that saw me miss the bikes on the ground only to be pin-balled off someone’s shoulder and straight into the post mounted TV camera with my shoulder (still nursing a bruised shoulder) I settled into the game of figuring out how to try and move up when going even one mph faster through the turns meant about a 70% increase in the likelihood of crashing. Given the conditions it was a course that really favored those with good “snap” out of turns, because as you could carry no momentum through them the space in between turns was spent either accelerating out of one or decelerating for the next. I had a pretty solid race, finishing up in 33rd out of about 70 starters. I found it consoling that former world champion of cyclocross Lars Boom, who started in my row because of his lack of UCI points (he’s been racing on the road more now), was only able to make it into 22nd. It was really that hard of a course to move up on. If the person in front of you really wanted to guard their position with a leg out in the turns etc, it was extremely difficult to pass. And just like that the racing was over and the off-season began. I even had some cookies as a celebratory symbolism to no longer needing a post race recovery shake….umm cookies are way better then protein powder.

After the race, and a long ride back to the house due to some weather related traffic, it was the race to pack bikes, wheels and everything else in preparation for an early morning departure to Brussels airport. Some creative packing allowed me to accommodate the newly enacted one carry-on rule and still not have my bike case or 4-wheel bag be over weight. And luckily, somehow, the baggage gods decided to smile on me and grant me a reprieve for all my good karma lately and I was able to check my double bike case and said wheel bag for $50 instead of the possible $250. Sweet! Now all I could hope for is that they make it to JFK on the same plane I was on. After spending what seemed, through the magic of flying backwards in time zones, like an infinitesimal amount of time either on planes or waiting for them I made it safe and sound to my grandmothers house in Harrison where my Dad was waiting to pick me up. Oh, and amazingly, my bike and bag made it as well. Home sweet home. Damn it’s cold!

It might just be that I spend too much time thinking about bikes and racing, but I am always finding the allegorical ways that racing provides lessons for real life. The ups and downs of a season, the reaching of certain goals only to have others fall short is something I try and carry with me in dealing with other aspects of my life. As my European campaign is over and I’m writing this while sitting on my cozy futon in my cozy house looking out the window at a world blanketed in a cold white shroud, it’s easy to cast a reflective eye back over a season with a little more perspective then you are sometimes granted in the heat of the moment. There are ways in which I could look at my trip to Belgium and be disappointed at not having the best of luck, or perhaps even my best of form. On the other hand, and I think this is the important part, is that I got to experience something I’ve always dreamed about. When you’re lined up on the start line it’s hard to take a moment and realize what’s going on and where you are. But now, as I think about it, I realize that I was lined up at races with the highest level of competition in the world. Until cyclocross makes it as an Olympic sport the World Cup and Super Prestige series will constitute the highest level of obtainable competition.

It seems like a long time ago sometimes, but when I was fifteen and first racing mountain bikes for the first time, this moment couldn’t be conceived of in my over imaginative brain. That I would some day reach a level where I could line up with some of the best athletes in the world in any sport was unfathomable to me. So am I disappointed that I got lapped in some races where I think if I’d had that extra three percent I had in November I could have finished higher up? Am I disappointed that some jerk stepping on my wheel and a missed bike change derailed my best race? Yes. I never go into a race without wanting to give it my best and do well. On the other hand, I did give it everything I had, I got a few solid results, and I know I have a lot more work still to do. But the experience has been an instrumental learning curve, like deep immersion in a language. I have thrown more shoulders in a week then I have in the past three seasons. I think I’ll be less intimidated by starts, and certainly more cautious of guarding my position in races. I need to run more, and practice massive power outputs like those necessary to blast through hundreds of yards of six-inch deep mud. And despite all of these shortcomings and things I need to improve, I am less disheartened then looking forward to how to improve.

A few days ago I would have told you I couldn’t wait till the off-season. Now, after not riding for a whole two days I am already itching to go out and train super super hard for the upcoming road season. (I know, I know, I can hear you all telling me that I need more then a two day break…I’m trying) This trip has been motivational and inspirational. It is the simultaneous achievement of a dream and a stepping-stone to what I hope will be further success. It was an honor and a pleasure, and I hope I get to go back again next year with even more learned, and newfound motivation. Thank you all again for helping to make this possible for me. It was amazing.

-Justin

Josh Lehmann races in the Vermont Verge Cross race.

Josh also talks about pushing through the hard days and learning through each race, “How to find success in a less than stellar performance is invaluable. A couple of the races did not go according to the plan. Either I had trouble warming up, had no legs or had mechanical issues. While they were not ideal, each one had a lesson to take away to improve the next race. Whether learning how to play full contact ‘cross (politely) or figuring out how to get the best results without the normal power in the engine. There was definitely a lesson in each race.”

And by coming to Camp, Josh got a chance to meet some of EuroCrossCamp’s Alum and learn from their experiences, “Enjoying the experience is a tremendous reward. I am not sure which I enjoyed more, being able to chat with Jamie Driscoll and Jeremy Powers or racing at a World Cup in the Team USA skinsuit. Being able to just shoot the breeze with the Cannondale/Cylocrossworld.com boys was pretty cool. Then again, toeing the line in the USA skinsuit was AWESOME. I am almost certain that the skinsuit added at least 50 watts to my start.”

Josh Lehman rides for Sunapee/S&W/Continental Paving and is from Weare, New Hampshire. This is the first ECXC for Josh. Check out his entire Diary entry on CyclingNews.com and catch up on the previous entries.