The CX Nationals tree fiasco from last January is behind us and here in West Texas, we're taking the lessons learned from that weekend and putting them to good use for the upcoming cyclocross season.We've partnered with a rouge group called 'Leave No Mesquite Living' to design the course for our local CX races and - based on the obviously superior research conducted by Austin's Heritage Tree Foundation - we fully expect every dammed mesquite on our course to be dead by the end of this year's racing season.
It's a win-win. Race CX and kill bad trees at the same time.
The course design included the obvious best practices - a long starting straight, off-camber corners, steps to run up, a sand pit and some up and down sections to test climbing and descending skills.
We also added 'tree kill zones' as an important course design goal.
Before the actual course was marked we identified all mesquites that would be targeted as part of the 'eradicate by bike' initiative. The course was then routed directly over the primary feeder roots for the condemned trees to ensure that the soil becomes compacted causing the mesquites to experience loss of growth, spread of decay in the root system and hopefully - a premature death.
Baby mesquites have also targeted by routing the course directly over them in hope that repeated abuse by CX tires will not only pluck small thorns from the sprouts but will also alleviate the problem of having to hand-chop the little bastards.
Although we don't doubt the tree damage claims made by the Austin experts, there are some who doubt that our cyclocross season tree eradication program will work. Local experts point out that even in the midst of a multi-year drought the mesquites (and other trees) that line area mountain bike trails are flourishing.
Let's hope the 'kill mesquite trees with CX bikes' initiative works as planned - if so, it'll be a lot cheaper than using chemicals and bulldozers. Our goal is to have every rancher in the region clamoring for us to ride through their pastures and kill off mesquites.
Ride on, and remember - the only good mesquite is a dead one that's been repurposed as fuel for a BBQ grill.
