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Katie Compton: It's all about the worlds
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For American cyclocrosser Katie Compton, the pieces are coming together in her long pursuit of a world 'cross championship, a chase she hopes to conclude successfully Feb. 1 in Hoogerheide, Netherlands.
Compton, who turns 30 on Wednesday, says she feels stronger than ever this season — and she's been racing bicycles since she was 10 years old.
Besides her physical maturation, Compton (whose primary sponsor is Spike Shooter) has improved her tactical sense and technical skills racing on Europe's toughest courses, a mastery she displayed with her win this weekend at the Koksidje World Cup. She overcame a bad start to calmly bridge up to the early leaders, then dispatch world champion Hanka Kupfernagel in a well-timed, powerful sprint.
"This whole maturation thing is great," she told VeloNews on Tuesday, just after returning to her Colorado home from her second European racing trip of the season. "It just gets better every year."
Yet while Compton's form, technical savvy and tactical skills are honed, she still struggles with a condition she has had since she was a teenager and that kept her from improving on her 2007 silver medal at Hooglede-Gits, Belgium.
Compton suffers debilitating leg cramps that can put her out of commission for weeks. The cramping returned just before the last world championships, in Italy in January, when she dropped out on the first lap.
The cramping apparently comes from an enzyme depletion and is triggered by overtraining, travel, and days off the bike, she says.
So Compton and her husband/manager/mechanic Mark Legg carefully manage those factors. This season she plans two more trips to Europe: She'll head over late this month, come home on New Year's for a few weeks of training in Colorado, then return to Europe in mid-January to stay through the worlds.
Compton has been careful about avoiding too much high-intensity training, and when she flies she wears Skins compression tights and gets out of her seat often to stretch her legs. She never takes days off the bike. She's skipping the Portland USGP finals this weekend to reduce her travel time.
Despite the efforts — and despite early season wins at CrossVegas and the Cincinnati 'Cross Festival — Compton's first European venture this fall was a bust; she missed several weeks of racing, both at home and abroad. Her second trip overseas was more successful, with the Koksidje win and a Superprestige win.
"I was beginning to think I was getting (the condition) under control," she said. "Right now it's very inconsistent. I'm backing off the intensity and putting in more recovery time, and so far that's working. It's such a crap shoot: I don't know if I am doing enough (intensity training) to be competitive ... but at this point I'd rather be a little less strong and just be able to race."
There are no typical career paths for cyclocross racers, much less for an American woman. But Compton is clear that she has built this season around one objective: winning gold on February 1.
"I can't do the World Cup overall, it's too hard to do while living in the U.S. ... I would like to do more races (domestically), but I can't do everything. So I'm doing the World Cups for the UCI points so I get a good start position at worlds, and for the experience racing against the best riders on the toughest courses. And one of these times, I'm going to get that gold."
Compton is familiar with the world's course, just 20 kilometers from her base in Belgium. "It's a heavy, muddy, technical course. It's pretty fun, but there's not a lot of tactics to it," she said.
Compton's key rivals in February are likely to be the same women she has battled at World Cups and world championships for the last several seasons: four-time winner Hanka Kupfernagel of Germany and 2003 champ Daphny van den Brand of Holland.
"We are all pretty similar," Compton said, assessing her chances. "I feel like, after this weekend, I have a pretty good sprint. Tactically I'm getting better ... Daphny doesn't run as well as me, so she tries to get ahead of me before the running section. But it could be any of us, it depends on who has a good day."
