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We talked about it a little bit at the London league this Sunday actually.
This is my first ever season of cross, and of racing in general. But what I've enjoyed most is that, despite how good or bad I race, at any one time on the field I race with other people.
It doesn't matter to me that the butt in front of me is a men's or a women's.
If there was no one on the field in front of me, or chasing me, I wouldn't progress half as fast. I wouldn't progress at all.What I like about the league is that I get to race with insanely strong women as much as with others who are closer to my abilities. I feel very inspired and learn a lot from trying to stick to their wheel as much as I possibly can (for about 35 seconds). It's great.
And vets being on the course facilitate that learning. If they weren't there, how would I learn to overtake ? How would I learn anything at all, lost and all alone in the middle of a really spread out course ?It'd be great to have a women only race one day. When there's enough of us to make it interesting. And I'm sure it will happen eventually.
Until then, I'm really happy to share the field with the vets.
And I'm pretty sure they are happy with that too.But then, I would have probably never gotten into cross it if it wasn't for the cross skills sessions we did last year, which was a women's only event.
Looking back at it, I'm pretty sure it was just the guarantee to be around similarly skilled people, with similar mentalities, that made me want to do it. Not the fact that we all happened to be women.
I just knew I could show up and do what ever, I wasn't going to be judged, because we would all be in the same bucket. And I don't think that had anything to do with gender. More to do with trust.I'm thinking a lot about this whole thing and parallels that can be drawn between women in the cycling scene and women in tech, because they are two things which matter a lot to me.
I'm not sure where my head is at with it yet.I'm not sure there is any conclusion to this either.
As far as I'm concerned, when it feels forced or staged, I'm running away from it.
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I was at the Rapha Supercross this weekend. One of the things they included in the schedule was a Women's Only race on the Saturday. Despite offering that, there wasn't a great field. 27 on a course designed for 100+. On the Sunday, it was back to the usual Yorkshire cyclocross categories with women being mixed in with V45 men and upwards. There were 17 entries.
There were some notable absences from the Saturday race including the women who were taking part in the elites invitational race but also some regular faces from the league races. Of course with this not being a league race and on a Sunday, riders may have been off doing those other things they might otherwise sacrifice or put off. But there wasn't a particularly strong uptake from new riders taking advantage of riding competitively on a course without men there as well.
The same might be considered true in the National Trophy races the weekend before. In 2014 there was a big push to get a Women's V40+ race in the schedule and a lot of chivvying behind the scenes to get people to prove it was wanted. This year's opening round in Southampton had a small field for that category.
I'm not sure what the anwer is here. I do wonder if for some people it's just a bit too late and the focus needs to be on that tricky transition between racing as a youth and racing in the junior category. I think these days there are less social barriers to women carrying on being competitive and athletic beyond school age. But that's just guess work. However, there were some telling comments on Sunday after the races. Some of the women were glad to be back racing with the men again. There was more action going on on the field, more wheels to chase and more competitors to battle against. I think for some of those Saturday 27, it was a bit lonely out there. Perhaps tellingly though, those comments did come from experienced riders.
I'm not going to say that cyclocross isn't for women, it obviously is. But is it maybe too niche? Or is there something else going on acting as a barrier to entry that needs to be worked on first?
Looking to the next events, outside of national level races the other Women only event I can think of in cyclocross is Ripley Castle in the New Year. They've stated an aim to get 100 women on the start line. I hope they get a lot closer than this weekend did.