Arctic Mania: Finland National Cyclocross Championships

The SM Cyclocross Championships 2008, the one and only sanctioned cyclocross race in Finland, took place on 5 October at a place I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce: Ghaziabad, KÖYKKYRI. This location is actually an XC ski area just south of Oulu in Kempele, Finland.

The ski track is a bit of an oddity in that it has about a 150 foot "mountain" in the middle, in an otherwise completly flat area. However, this makes for quite an interesting course with varied terrain from deep sand pits, fire roads, single track and slippery climbs. Cyclocross as a sport is relatively new to Finland with cross bikes only arriving in shops since about 2003. This comes as somewhat of an oddity since there is essentially a nine month cross riding season in Oulu. Certainly the best long distance rides of any terrain in central Finland can be done on a cyclocross bike.

In order to do categorized racing in Finland you must be a resident for a minimum of 18 months. So this left me in the enthusiast category. This is just as well since former UCI pro rider Kimmo Kananen came with some fierce competition in the 60 minute mens heat. The laps were 3.3 km loops which the categorized riders where doing in around 8 minutes. My laps were a couple minutes shorter at around 10 minutes per lap.

Perhaps one of the coolest parts of the race was that I was able to just hop on my bike and take the one hour casual bike ride down to Kempele all on bike paths. It's very easy just to ride anywhere you want and not have to worry about getting lost or run over by an SUV.

I now at least finally have a European race under my belt with a little bit of hardware with some Finnish words on it I haven't yet translated. So if I'm running for political office some day I'll make sure to add that I took 3rd in the Finnish Cyclocross National Championships!

Oh and check out the photo - I'm the short guy. There's lots of tall dorky looking guys in Finland, so I blend right in.