prepping for cyclocross

Yes, one of the best ways to dial your dirt skills is to ride mountain bikes and get used to riding fast in crazy technical stuff. Makes the relatively tame cross stuff seem easy by comparison. Ride your road bike for the fitness and speed and ride your MTB for the dirt skills. It's a killer combo for cross season.

-Dave

Awesome. The state champion was telling me about a drill he does on his road bike: goes to a parking lot, and then does figure-8s in a parking space. Said it really helped with his cornering and handling.

Presently, I'll admit to having basically no focus or specialty. I enjoy track, road, crits, and cross. Haven't done mountain biking but we're fortunate to have some decent technical trails and come summer especially, it'd be nice to ride in the shade sometimes as opposed to 95 degrees and blistering sun. The one cross race I did was possibly the most fun I've ever had on a bike, and supremely hard. Though I likely didn't turn it all on--my average heart rate was still a good 7 beats under "threshold" so I probably had way more in the tank...

Yep, cross is a blast. It's like a super technical time trial where you're maxed out for the entire race and in a pass or be passed mode the entire time. And it's way more mentally engaging than a road time trial as there's a new technical challenge every few seconds and then all the passing that happens which can be a work of art when you dial it in. Really fun stuff but then as you've noted lot's of different riding can be fun and no need to specialize right now if ever. Do what's fun and if you start getting serious competitive goals like racing well at the state championship level or racing nationals in one discipline then yeah you'll likely gravitate towards that discipline and that's great as well.

The figure eight drill is standard stuff on the actual cross bike or even on the road bike on slicker surfaces like grass or a dusty field. You learn how far you can take the bike in terms of speed and learn some subtle body English skills for dealing with rear and even front tire washouts. I'd actually do most of those on the cross bike or at least do them on dirt so you can take it to the point of sliding out with no big penalty. Also corner on the road bike on pavement to work on things like developing a wide variety of safe and fast lines for crit cornering but that's a bit different beast than loose surface cross cornering. Some great youtube videos on cyclocross technique including cornering, search around and you'll find some great drills and some great stuff on things like passing in traffic and cornering tactically like this:

-Dave