My new incentive for cycling in autumn

The beginning of autumn is beautiful. The leaves turn brown and when the sun shines through them they glint a golden colour as they hang onto the trees. But then they fall and everything looks and dead. The trees are bare and empty and when the wind blows through them the cold hits you hard and reminds you of winter. Autumn is pretty, but late fall is pretty sad. Nothing left to do but pick up the dead leaves from the ground and prepare for snow next.

Cycling through autumn though can be wonderful. The temperature drops with the leaves but so do the demands on your fitness and training and form. Riding slower and taking in the beautiful colours around you becomes easier at the back end of the cycling season. Until it gets too cold at all and you're spending too much time on a turbo. In a trace like state, starting at the wall in front of you. Going nowhere.

That is it, if you live in a country like Canada. If you don't take off to a training came somewhere warm. If you aren't a professional headed to some exotic training camp. But right now, in autumn, even the professionals ride like us. If only for a month. They're back at home now and riding at a speed we can comprehend and could even ride along with. Enjoy it, I tell myself, before they go south to places warm and I go south to the basement and that turbo.

Road cycling in autumn is a time of steady rides on crisp mornings with occasional stops at warm coffee shops. Far from overheating, but with ample gear to ensure you're not frozen either. Sure you spend longer than usual looking out the window at the sky and the wind on the leaves. Sizing up the difference between the temperature, and the wind-chill temperature. Trying to decide whether to throw on that extra layer, or wear a cap rather than something to cover the ears. In the end you don't judge it quite right anyway. Within ten minutes of setting out you're either stripping a layer off, or you're accepting a ride with cold hands or cold ears or arms. But it's never too bad and the ride is still nice anyway.

Away from the road though, and before I dip into the basement and onto the turbo for winter, autumn also has me thinking of cyclo-cross. A different discipline that has a higher level of intensity for chilly autumn days. I've never raced in cross before, but I have taken to watching it on television in recent years. That was the limit of it. Until last week. And that's why I'm thinking about it more than usual.

Last Thursday I got a brand new cross bike. My first new bike in five years. My first road eligible bike in over ten. I'm nowhere ready to race a cross bike, but I'm ready to ride one. The cross bike will bring an added dimension to autumn and winter riding, if the weather holds. It is the seven days a week bike. Versatile. On it you can race on a Sunday, commute to work during the week and take the kids for a pull on the chariot the next weekend. With rack mounts for panniers, it gives me extra scope for future touring again.  It is something I can use on longer road rides too with a tire change.

That isn't to say my existing road bike, which has served me well, is heading to the scrap heap. But it does mean I can put it on the turbo for winter and if there's a decent break in the weather I can nip out on the cross bike for an hour. On mid-week evenings I can turbo. On a crisp Saturday mornings I can go for a quick hour on the cross bike. And next summer I will have outside ride options with both bikes.

On Sunday I took it for its maiden voyage. I only went for about 30km but I tried to incorporate a decent load of off-road to see how it felt. There's several beaten down farm tracks not far from me, and plenty of gravel, fire and dirt roads. There's no shortage of those to explore now. And this time of year, when miles and a premium on performance (as though it ever is for me) is not of importance, exploring can be at its best. And when I do feel like pushing my fitness that bit more, a cross-bike on that terrain is ideal.

What it has also done is give me added incentive for next years racing. In particular the first event at Paris-Ancaster. That's a race made for cross bikes but with the option to ride on a mountain bike. Last year I had to doing it on the later. It was fun, but it was slow going. By my reckoning a cross bike could save me up to 45 minutes on my finishing time over the 70km. There's a desire now to do some cyclo-cross training, to put miles in on the road and to make the best of it. And if I can sustain some fitness through the summer to try some cross-racing next fall. As I said, a new bike opens up new options. A new bike always adds incentive and desire. It's why us amateur cyclists, who don't come by motivation quite like the professionals, should all get to buy one new bike at least once per year.

But let me not get too far ahead of myself. A new bike per year is not realistic and autumn is still far away. It's still mid-November outside and our current autumn is still lingering. But the pretty colours are on the ground now and the sensation of winter is drawing in. And as it does I try to appreciate the time I have for easy paced rides before it gets too cold to enjoy a ride at all.