Speed Control on a Cyclocross Course

Video Transcript

"MICKEY DENONCOURT: So if you have a race course that's, you know, about a kilometer long, you know, it's like six minutes or so to get around and you've got 45 seconds of ridiculous, tight, twisty technical cornering, then the rest of it is open corners and road sections, you know, you don't need to kill yourself trying to keep up with the fastest rider through the really hard stuff when it looks like what the race is really going to be about is just following wheels and going fast in the open stuff. So sometimes you have to really, you know, analyze your own strengths. If you're really a technical rider, yeah, maybe you can make 10 seconds there. But, you know, if, you know, you just need to follow people who are really fast on the road sections when you, you know, when you get there, you know, when you get to this technical stuff, just take it easy so you have all the energy that you need to really make that, you know, make that break, make that group that's going up the road. If I've been following somebody strong through here, you know, I probably could have gone faster through this section, probably faster than him. But if I'm in front of him and I'm wasted then we get to this long road section and this goes, you know, straight ahead again for another, you know, 100, 120 yards, he's going to kill me. He's going to come by me all fresh and recovered because he was sitting there working easy and I'm going to be tired. I'm going to be dogging it. And when I get to this section again next lap after, you know, my tongue hanging out like a dog for five or six minutes, it's going to get harder. So, you know, you need to think about the whole race course when you're riding it and not just what you can hot dog on, what you can show off on."