Oh yeah, it’s here again. Gotta love a good cross season.

For those uniniated into the grand world of cyclocross it is sort of a wacky hybrid between road racing, mountain biking, and a running steeplechase. As our good friend James Johnson once said (and another influence on the bike’s name), “Cyclocross is 45 minutes of cross my heart and hope to die that my heart doesn’t explode.”

Here’s how it breaks down. Hop on the bike, ride around a course that frequently includes all sorts of mud, water, dirt, grass, you name it. Then fly off the bike and run (bike in hands) across some nutsy bridge or whatever. Then do a flying leap back onto the bike. Rinse and repeat till the race is over, maybe no rinse though…it is more fun to stay muddy.

We’ve got two favorite types of cyclocross frames, the singlespeed and the 1×9. The singlespeed’s great for it’s simplicity as always…no shifting, no worries (and problems when the conditions get really freakin’ nasty and everyone else can’t shift because everything is coated in frozen mud.) The 1×9 is great when the weather is nice…gives you a few options for gearing without being overly complex or heavy. But then again, when it gets muddy and frozen…you can get a bit screwed.