Firsts!

No, not race results! I rode off-road for the very first time ever last weekend!

Last year I bought a little steel cross frame, put mudguards on it and put it into service as a winter training bike. (Since it weighs about 2kg more than my racing bike, and had 25mm tyres, I christened it Jan - my big, fat, winter bike.) Now I've taken the mudguards off and put even bigger, fatter, knobbly tyres on and am determined to have a go at the London Cyclocross League races this winter.

Up at the shop, Tony's going to have a go for the first time, too (although he's already pretty handy off-road, being a regular competitor at singlespeed MTB races) and Jules is resurrecting what I suspect was a pretty glorious career in the mud. When one of the members of my cycling club offered to lead a Cyclocross skills session last Saturday, about a dozen of us turned up. It seems everyone is going cross crazy this year!

If you're now asking yourself, "What on earth is cyclocross?", have a look here.

If it doesn't kill me, it'll do my bike-handling a world of good. And it's given me a great excuse to get a sexy new pair of wheels! They won't be delivered for about 3 weeks yet, so I won't say any more until they arrive - first race is this weekend and I'm worried that my cross career might be over before I even get to the all-the-gear-no-idea phase.

I'm frightened, but I reckon that lots of people less fit and able than I am manage to do it, so I should be able to, too. We'll see soon enough, eh?