Introduction to Dismounting & Remounting Cyclocross Racing

Series Summary

Cyclocross racing can most easily be described as a bicycling sport that combines mountain biking and road racing. Cyclocross bikes themselves are a hybrid of road bikes and mountain bikes. Cyclocross bikes have a rigid frame and front fork as do road bikes as well as drop handle bars. However, CX bicycles have cantilever brakes, lower gears, and more aggressive tires than road bikes. Additionally there are points in every CX race that the competitor must dismount from the cyclocross bicycle and run up a steep hill or over a barrier - unless however the racer is like Sven Nys and jump barriers with a bunny hop. If you would like to learn techniques for dismounting and remounting your CX bicycle in a Cyclocross race or improve your skills, you can learn for free from one of our experts, online.

In this free Cyclocross racing video series, learn how to dismount and remount a Cyclocross bike during a race from Cyclocross expert Mickey Denoncourt. Mickey will demonstrate how to dismount at speed from a Cyclocross bike, how to go through barriers in a Cyclocross race, how to land on the saddle when remounting a Cyclocross bicycle, how to shoulder a CX bike when running up a steep hill, how to carry a Cyclocross bicycle when running over a barrier, how to avoid the stutter step when remounting a Cyclocross bike, and how to dismount and run in sand with a Cyclocross bicycle. Additionally Mickey will teach you drills for developing your skills for Cyclocross racing.

Video Transcript

"The biggest challenge in Cyclocross is the one that is least like any other sport is getting off your bike at like twenty-five miles an hour, sprinting for three seconds and then getting back on your bike seamlessly. That dismount, remount process is pretty difficult, pretty specific. There are some things you need to know. Also you know how to pick up your bike to run up a hill quickly all that sort of stuff is super difficult to figure out if you have not seen someone do it before and you have to make it up as you go along. You know it is real specific, specific rules of thumb that you have to follow to make it work well. Fundamentally, somewhere you have got a a set of sixteen inch high barriers, they are wooden planks that are nailed into the ground that really make this sport different, you know. There is other times that you run in Cyclocross, you know, unrideable hills, logs at the bottom of hills and stuff like that. It is just practicing that, getting all those techniques down are really going make and break it. You can be the strongest cyclist in the world with the best bike handling skills, but if you do not know how to handle these Cyclocross specific techniques you are off the back."