They Love Playing the Pain Game

Hey, wait a minute. Aren’t these people cyclocrossing for all the wrong reasons?

They like the thrill of victory, of course. But they seem to relish the agony of the feet. Cyclocross, a wacky hybrid of mountain biking and road racing, requires a 35- to 60-minute all-out assault on the body.

Competitors slosh through mud and tote their bikes around barriers and up hills and stairs, sometimes reaching a state of exhaustion before crossing the finish line.

“You feel like you’re wearing cement shoes,” explained racing veteran Mike Lee of Mission Viejo. “Your legs feel like cement, your bike starts to feel like cement and it really hurts.”

Then there’s the mental aspect of the sport.

Staying in the lead pack requires a cat-and-mouse game of drafting behind the leader and deciphering when to make a push for the front. Others prefer to bolt ahead early and lead wire to wire--if they’re strong enough to handle the exhaustion this strategy guarantees.

“A lot of it is mental, just to overcome the pain,” said Brent Vandenberg of Huntington Beach. “You’ve just got to think, ‘Hey, the other guy is suffering too,’ so if you can suffer a little bit more that’s what makes you better.”

So what’s the payoff? Why spend big bucks on a cyclocross bike just to come out on what should be a lazy Sunday morning and race yourself into the ground for petty cash prizes?

Perhaps Emilio Cervantes of Seal Beach, a certifiable swami of cyclocross, can provide some answers.

“How could you enjoy something that’s so difficult?” he asked, repeating the question. “It gets beyond words. What’s that old saying? Somebody asked a man why he was hitting himself in the head with a two-by-four and he said, ‘Because it feels so good when I stop.’ It’s kind of like that.

“But it’s incredibly rewarding to do something that’s this hard. You have an unbridled passion for it and it drives you and makes you dig deeper.”

Despite--or, it would seem, because of--its heavy physical and mental toll, cyclocross is a burgeoning sport in Southern California. About 100 racers showed up last Sunday at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson to compete in the fourth of five Urban Cyclocross Series races that have been held there this fall.

The competitors range from Dane Jankowiak, a Huntington Beach High junior, to Victor Viscio, a 45-year-old Huntington Beach resident who’s a project manager for a construction company.

The final series race of the season, the California-Nevada Championships Dec. 19 at Dominguez Hills, is expected to feature the biggest field of the year. The premier men’s event will start at 11 a.m.

Cyclocross has come a long way since its roots in turn-of-the-century France. The event got its start from road racers who were training during winter. Their feet got so cold that the racers jumped off their bikes and ran with them awhile to warm their feet up. Eventually someone came up with the idea of constructing a course using makeshift barriers, and a race was held.

Over the last 25 years the sport has slowly caught on in the United States, particularly in New England, the Pacific Northwest, Colorado and Northern California. Only over the last decade has cyclocross crept into the consciousness of Southern California riders seeking to stay in shape between road racing and mountain biking seasons. The cyclocross season runs from October through December.

“It’s really catching on down here,” said Vandenberg, a sales representative for a beverage company in Glendale. “It’s getting big. Three or four years ago there was like five guys in a race. Two weeks ago we had 35 guys in our race.”

There are few official cyclocross courses in Southern California--none in Orange County--and the ones that do exist are usually dry and dusty, making for a less traditional form of the sport. In other parts of the country, cyclocross racers trek through mud, and sometimes snow, making the race as much a test of survival as sheer ability.

Of course, two years ago the El Nino rains gave local racers a taste of what the sport is really supposed to be like. Some couldn’t get enough.

“I’d rather have the mud,” said Lee, a semiprofessional mountain bike racer. “In horse racing they call them mudders. I’m definitely a mudder. The more extreme the conditions, the better it is for me because more guys are complaining about it, but I really enjoy it.”

Countered Vandenberg: “No mud. I’m not built for running. The more speed the better.”

Last Sunday’s event on the 1.8-mile Dominguez Hills course demonstrated just how bizarre the sport can be. Racers battled a steep embankment and a flight of stairs, to name just two obstacles.

Cervantes, a service manager for a bicycle shop in Irvine, won two divisions with only a five-minute break between races.

“When people ask me why I do it I say, ‘Because it’s hard,’ ” Cervantes said. “That’s what makes it good. Believe it or not, we all love it. It’s a ton of fun.”

For more information about the California-Nevada Championships, call Back On Track Productions at (310) 378-NINE or log onto https://www.backontrackproductions.com.