Cycling Blogs - Colt From Cyclingdirt

I've been dreading this day for a long time. Mountain Bike season on Cyclingdirt is inching closer and closer to an end. This weekend's coverage of the Schladming World Cup in Austria will mark the 40th and final race coverage of the season. Is it just me, or did that go by way too fast? So many things left to do; just one more trip, one more race, one more interview... That's all I keep thinking.

Ten months ago I was at a Cyclocross race on Long Island. Saturday's race had gone well enough but the recovery left a lot to be desired. Stomach pains, again. Sunday morning brought more of the same and the idea of spectating that afternoon started to seem like a smart choice. I spent the morning in bed watching race footage and interviews from the NCAA Cross Country Running Championships in Indiana. Being a Track & Field fan was great. I could watch every race, listen to interviews with the world's best, and share in their emotions from my motel room in the Hamptons. After my heart rate lowered from watching a thrilling end to the men's 10k, I stopped by my favorite Cycling News sites to look at results. Sven Nys had won. thrilling.

That afternoon's race came and went with me screaming on the sidelines. I hung around for an hour or so, making the rounds, catching up with friends and hearing their story from the race. Even at a 'Cross race, the most mobile spectator still misses more of the race than they catch, so it's always important to get the dirt on who rolled a tire here and who bobbled there. Being on the starting line for so many years, focusing on my own race, I didn't experience that perspective very often. It was thrilling. I was a fan.

Could anyone ever be a Cyclocross fan if they themselves didn't race? Even if they did, what if the best riders never come to those races? Does seeing Trebon's name above Johnson's name above Powers' name get you excited for what will happen next? Certainly hanging out and talking to them back at the hotel would. I hadn't run a race on a track since Freshman year of high school, I raced my bike 50 days a year, and still I was a bigger fan of Running than I was Cycling. That didn't make sense. But then, the average NFL fan isn't padding up for two-a-days all summer and he'll still sit on his couch and watch every game.

Skip ahead three weeks to the Best Buy parking lot. I had just emptied my checking account on a video camera. Three nights later, I couldn't sleep. It was the eve of the final Cyclocrss race of the season in New England and I could not have cared less about pinning on a number. 40 hours sleepless and 120 gigs of race footage later, I started to think this might be possible. Two weeks later, in Tucson, Arizona I did my first interview. Then my second, third, and so on. A week after that I was on a plane to Milan, Italy for the final round of the Cyclocross World Cup followed by the Cyclocross World Championships in the Netherlands. I made this on the plane ride home.

1,868 videos, 44 races, 10 Countries, 28 states, and 81 tanks of gas later and here we are at Cyclingdirt dot org. I've spent a lot of time during these last two weeks thinking, "How the fuck did that happen?" Looking back, it didn't seem real. Then came time to book a flight to Seattle for Star Crossed, then Vegas for Interbike, then to Wisconsin for the USGP, then so on and so on. It still doesn't seem real. My job is to go to the biggest bike races and talk to the best riders in the world. Does that sound real to you?

Thankfully, time's up on my time off. Cyclocross season is inching closer and closer to a start. In one final attempt to remember Mountain Bike Season '09, I'll be doing a sort of "Best Of..." Or as I'd like to call it, The 2009 MTB Video Awards. (Kenye West not included.) Check in Thursday, every hour, 10AM-10PM as we look back on some of the best moments of the year.

Then, Cyclocross.