May 30th, 2019
Huttcross 19.1: Big Girl Pants
Words – Kim Hurst Images – Lisa Ng
Clocks were synchronized, alarms set, starter’s orders issued, whistles primed, and a Club Secretary was busy getting so high on paint fumes in his garage that he’d fail doping control. All in the club’s quest to put Wainui on the map for the first time in cyclocross history.
The rulebook had a quick revision before somebody brought a bloody Bosch to the holeshot jamboree. A mandate was passed for all watts to be earned honestly through blood, sweat and toil.
New tape was unfurled. Muddy, knotted stuff rewound and retired, appropriately bestowed with Long Service and Good Conduct medals. Pimp new flags and the most insane spotties across Aotearoa thanks to rad sponsors. Just by virtue of shredding hard in a local park at least once this winter, you grab a ticket to the big prize draw. As if the shredding wasn’t reward enough in itself. A keen Scotsman, back for another year, promises to recreate Obree’s Old Faithful should he hit the custom frameset jackpot.
Numbers so big that a couple of waved starts were introduced to avoid an Everest queue in the death zone when the advancing cavalry encountered the first course bridge.
A Biscuit Selection Tin of obstacles, grown from lone barriers nestled in a variety of grass or mud or grass-and-mud, evolved to barriers, logs, and even a custom flyover, all segwayed with a creative mix of permanent park features.
Farewell, long open parkland slogs. Rear derailleurs lived to survive another day, navigating Round One without suffering an overly familiar breach in capacity followed by a final knockout punch. Conditions so dry that some double drifting without a mud slide was even a possibility.
Our presence in the Nui made the local rag. The sun shone down. Linked corner sequences rewarded those who stuck with knobs on their knobblies and carved out the ability to tip it in. Battle plans that relied on laying down the watts per kilo like a weight-doping Japanese Zwifter, did not survive the first encounter. Riders felt the flow, rode on the rivet and laid it down, sometimes inadvertently.
There were cowbells. And coffee. A whole goddamn race just for kids. A fishing rod dispensing hand-ups. A dislocated finger injury that provided a perfect opportunity for one ‘crosser to flip off the whole of Facebook post race. And B Grade going down to a sellout crowd.
Theme of the day? Beams. Smiles. Grins. And then more grins. Pure unadulterated maniac-lumberjack-gets-his-first-taste-of-hot-chainsaw-action-in-the-woods type grins.
Huttcross pulled on her big girl pants, hustled hard and stole hearts. 2019 is officially underway with 215 grown-ups, 35 kids and 12 tiny tots sharing the stoke to create the biggest CX race in EnZed history.
