Cyclocross 101: class 5, more on barriers

Now that we're familiar with the obstacles most commonly seen in 'cross we'll examine how some promoters use them to make the course really painful. One of the most common ways of creating such extra pain is to combine the run-up with barriers. Place a set of barriers at the bottom of a bank in which the riders will be going straight up and suddenly that rideable bank isn't so rideable. The rider coming in, dismounts to run over the barriers but then the bank has too much grade to get back on the bike and get it going. Thus the rider must run to the top. And as many people may have noticed, sprinting up a hill puts you into the red zone of anaerobic ability, no less while carrying something like a bike.

A slight variation on this is to throw the barriers in the middle of the uphill. This causes riders to carry less speed into the barriers as the bike slows quickly when it is not being pedaled up the hill. In actuality it tends to make the riders nearly stop forward motion. This makes for difficult traversing of the barriers.

To and another slight variation, throw a tight corner that exits uphill, with barriers part way up. This causes a situation where the rider must begin running up the hill from virtually a standing start, and without much running speed barriers are might tough to get over.

Below we see a picture from the GP of Gloucester in 2007. These barriers we placed in the middle uphill bank. It was very difficult to carry much speed into these barriers. There was a tight left hand turn, from which riders entered going down hill but exited going uphill. In the middle of this 20 meter bank was a set of 40cm barriers. The fastest way through was to dismount entering the corner, run up the hill until the ground leveled off then remount. Many racers attempted to mount their bikes to early and lost too much speed.




More to come after the weekend. It's off to the Gran Prix of Gloucester 2008.


Class 1, The Overview
Class 2, The Competition
Class 3, The Race Format
Class 4, The Barriers
Class 5, More On Barriers
Class 6, An in Depth Look at Barriers
Class 7, An in Depth Look at Run Ups
Class 8, An in Depth Look at Sand Pits
Class 9, The Start
Class 10, Review and Wrap Up