Mud, snow, ice, bikes, racing, pain, love, drinking beer, sauna, stupidity… that is Finnish cyclocross.

Last winter I speculated how the climate change might change the weather in Southern Finland so that we barely see proper winters anymore here.

Well, a loose group of Finnish bike enthusiasts such as cyclocross fans, fixie guys, bike messangers, few mountain bikers decided that an 8 month long endless fall shouldn’t limit having fun outdoors at all and started to organize an unofficial cyclocross series called VPCX. Before that we only had one official, UCI-sanctioned, cyclocross race in a whole season.

The name of the series comes from the Finnish and basically means “On The Wrong Trails” – which means that our cyclocross tracks vary quite a lot from those you typically see in the middle Europe, meaning that we often end up riding our drop bar bikes in places they are not designed for in the first place. Our typical trails are rooty and rocky and you won’t find that much smooth trails suited for “real” cyclocross races. Recently the tour has also had some more traditional cyclocross tracks but couple of the races in four-event series will always be held on those “wrong” type of trails.

Last weekend I rode on one of the races of the series, in Kivikko, Helsinki. This track was definitely a technical one for the cyclocross bike, and the conditions didn’t make it any easier. It has rained for a few days before and there were water puddles of around half meter deep and, well, mud all over, just as it should in a proper cyclocross race, of course. Weather was exceptionally warm though – no snow or ice this time.

I listed five good reasons to ride cyclocross already in August but one reason I didn’t mention is that the race format is so stupid that it is actually really fun, in a very perverted way. Basically you should ride one hour, full steam, from the start to the finish. If you like to compete at all there is no way to “take it easy on the start” or try any tactics whatsoever – the guys that are good on cyclocross just ride stupidly fast the entire race and are just animals on taking all the pain during the ride. Well, that said,  I rode relatively slow, not so competitive and just tried to enjoy, heh, the riding… which was still pretty miserable/lots of pain, and still somehow fun at the same time.

Luckily the UCI tire rules didn’t apply and I could use the hefty (for a cyclocross bike) 45mm Panaracer Firecross tires, which weren’t necessarily any faster but saved my butt in couple of situations on slippery rocks and loose wet sand! The only rule they had in a VPCX race is that you should have drop bars and a rigid fork. “Unofficial” bikes like mountain bikes are wellcome to ride too, they just don’t get points to the overall title of all four races. The tour is by no means serious as people drink beer during the event, ride in city fixies, like to dress funnily etc., but there are a couple of guys that are very fast and skilled riders, and I guess the title isn’t that worthless at all – at the moment with only one official UCI race this is the only cyclocross series in Finland after all!

Photos: 1. Juha Roivainen 2. Ante Pettersson 3. Juha Roivainen 4. Ante Pettersson – thanks for the pictures!

PS. We won’t write that much about biking in wintertime but we will still put up a bike post or two if something really interesting happens around…