Twentytwentyfive was a short ‘cross season in Alberta. We were down a couple of ABA Cup races in Edmonton (no Tubs on Tubs or Velocity CX), the Canmore races were cancelled, and provincials were early and it all felt a little lessened.

Wednesday Worlds #

This year I thought ahead and planned out my ‘cross seaon at work so I wouldn’t have to miss any of the Wednesday Worlds¹ nights. I just like them for the camaraderie and the feeling that I am part of a community of weirdos riding around too hard in an inefficient manner.

The summer is almost done and I haven’t updated this site in ages. But that is okay. I’m fine with not having written. Really and truly.

This year I haven’t biked as much as I did last year. Part of that is because I’ve started volunteering once a week at Bike Edmonton, which takes up time. Part of it is just being tired, and demoralized for being slow. I took up the mantle of Mountain Bike representative for VCC which meant I missed a few ftt races riding alone in capilanopark instead. When I did get in a couple of races, I was oh so slow, even though I worked so hard. I didn’t make it out to the good mountain biking at all this summer. I didn’t ride to work as much as I wanted. Just generally a blah kind of year.

I feel like I’ve been trying to focus a bit this past year. When I come home to a quiet house (four days a week) there are many things I could do. Watch shows, read books, cook interesting meals, go out and spend money being around people. But when I have all those options the tendency I have is to just kind of waste it. To work on that I’ve got three main things I’m working on filling my time with: bikes, books, and chess.

The cyclocross season starts in September for us in Edmonton. Some years we’ve (apparently) had snow right for the first races. There are kind of three aspects to the season for me. A bunch of training, the casual races and the sanctioned Alberta Cup races.

Training is training. I ride up and down hills and in parks.

Wednesday Night Worlds #

Much like the Fat Tire Tuesday races, Edmonton has a series of $5 cx races in ‘cross season. The A group starts a minute before the B group which starts a minute before the C group and everyone races for about 25 minutes.

This week I’ve had some good rides. There was the Velocity social ride last Saturday in which I risked going with the fast group and I did not die. I was not the fastest in that group and I was working hard, but it went pretty well. It was my second fastest time for 50k.

I’ve been to both the (uncancelled) Fat Tire Tuesday races down in Terwillegar park and have been very slow on my mountain bike. I do tend to prefer riding that bike for the joy of movement rather than pushing pushing pushing myself, but it’s a good non-comfort-zone kind of experience. And getting smoked by teenagers gives me good practice for the cyclocross season.

For me, mountain bike racing is not something I’m super into, so I wouldn’t pay much to do it like I do cyclocross, but the Fat Tire Tuesday races had always looked like fun so in 2024 I took the plunge.

• Race 1 2024-05-14: stravalink Started off with steep uphill on rocky surface. I got caught behind a couple of riders who went way slower than I could have, putting me in a hole the rest of the race. I was chasing a Hardcore Bike Club rider for most of the rest of the race. I gained time on the ups; he gained time everywhere else. There was one descent that was steep, kind of muddy and had a turn into a bridge right at the bottom. I had a tough time with it on my practice lap and managed to wipe out on it in Lap 2 (I’m a B-Group rider so I only did 3 laps).
  • 5/6 for 6 points
• Race 2 2024-05-28¹ : stravalink There was a prologue to stretch the group out a little before hitting the singletrack this week. Loads of climbing on this course. I was following one rider for most of the first lap before a pedal strike knocked me to a halt and my lost momentum meant I didn’t see her again until the last third of the third lap. The rooty climb was tough, and I messed up the line on lap 2. In the end I was lapped by a lot of the fast group riders (by two of them in lap 2).
  • 9/10 for 2 points
• Race 3 2024-06-18² : stravalink The organizers made this a shorter loop because the Oilers were playing a must-win game in the Stanley Cup Final, so they wanted us to get out of there quickly. I was chasing another B-group rider on the second lap who, when she passed me said “Don’t worry; I’m slow on the downhills.” So as she was opening more of a gap going down I tried to go faster and then a moment of inattention meant I clipped my bars on a tree and crashed. It hurt. I finished the race, but never did catch up with her.
  • 4/6 for 7 points
• Race 4 2024-06-25: stravalink This was pretty much the same course as the first FTT race of the year (although for some reason, the segment says it’s longer). I wiped out on that same off-camber descent I had trouble with in May, but managed to hang onto 2nd place in the B-Group nonetheless. Climbing is definitely where I gain a bit of time in these races.
  • 2/4 for 9 points
• Race 5 2024-07-02: Missed the race because of my kid’s soccer game. They had a Le Mans style start³ though, which sounded fun.
• Race 6 2024-07-09: Missed the race because I was in Valemount doing a little mountain biking. This was a team trivia race, and I have no idea how that works.

It is almost the end of April in 2024 and my Strava account says I’m in better shape than I was at any point last year. I’ve been out for a couple of VCC rides this season where it’s been about 11 degrees and I wore my tights and seemed to fit in pretty well.

In the first week there was a fast group and a slow group, which I definitely knew I should stick with (Strava number notwithstanding). My suspicions were justified the next week when chatting with one of the riders who’d been in the first week fast group. Apparently their average speed wasn’t that crazy, but they’re so strong in the wind. Some of them used to be Cat 1¹ racers so yeah, best shape of my life is still going to leave me in a puddle by the side of the road keeping up with them.

It has been years since Star Trek was really important to me. Decades. When I was a teen The Next Generation was (along with the Simpsons and the X-Files) the fiction I loved most. I loved the stories; I loved the vision of the future; most of all I loved the characters and could think of nothing better than flying around having adventures solving problems with a found family¹. That’s still something I love the idea of, and pretty much is my mental model of what I wanted out of a working life.

At the end of 2022 I began actually watching cyclocross races. My kid still had “naps” on days when he wasn’t at school and I discovered that YouTube could show me what had been going on in Belgium that morning. It was ‘kerstperiode’¹ so there were a pile of races to get thoroughly immersed in. I’d watch most of a race and then get the final lap queued up for when C could come out of his room and we would watch 15 minutes of muddy bike racing.

In 2023 I was hoping to be a better racer. I spent the winter actually using the gym we have at work, doing time on the stationary bike so as not to lose all my kilometres in my legs. They say you should do strength training and I tried but it’s a pain.

The other thing I did was join a club. Velocity Cycling Club is my new bunch. We have a coach and club jerseys and it’s all a bit more community-building than the lone-wolf cyclist thing I’ve been doing. I went on a couple of group rides and they were fun. The first was about 60km and easy riding. I self-selected to the slow group, and was the only person in it (along with the bunch leader). But it was good. I got to learn about some of the group riding norms and hand signals. Old Paul was very welcoming in general and did a good job showing me how to get close to people in the bunch.