October 5, 2024
- Tech Guide
- Location: Richmond Green Park, Calgary
- Course: stravalink
At one point in my season planning, I was going to be attending this race, but then things changed and I ended up working an evening shift the night before, which meant I’d need to get up at 4am to get to Calgary the next day, which wasn’t happening. It looked like a beautiful day for ‘cross racing from the Facebook pictures I’ve seen.
September 28, 2024
- Tech Guide
- Location: Voyageur Park Devon
- Course: stravalink
The first time I raced CX in Devon, I loved it. Last year I was injured beforehand so it turned out to be my worst race of the season, but it was still such a good course it was hard to really be down on it. This year I wasn’t hurt and just came in to have a good time.
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September 22, 2024
- Tech Guide
- Location: Capilano Park Edmonton
- Course: stravalink
Part two of the first Edmonton race weekend saw way more people (in my race at least). The course went backwards compared to Jim Horner the previous day. This was good for me because it meant we had a non-technical climb right after the start, and that’s something I’m pretty decent at. It also meant that the switchbacks we’d been climbing on Saturday were now a descent. I’m never super great at these kinds of things and in the pre-ride lots of people were testing and re-testing the lines1. After one wipeout when I was trying to cut it too close, I settled on unclipping my inside foot and dabbing a touch as I went around the steepest part. The best part of this feature was that it would be at the end of the lap so it wouldn’t be a huge mass of riders hitting it at the same time.
September 21, 2024
- Tech Guide
- Location: Capilano Park Edmonton
- Course: stravalink
The Jim Horner Grand Prix of Cyclo-cross was my first Edmonton race of the season, and it went well. Unlike last year we had clear skies with no Air Quality warnings so all the races happened.
Being in Novice Men, I had an early start while the grass was still dewy and wet. The course opened with a bunch of twisty turns including an uphill off-camber thing (see the picture above of the Sport Men tackling it). I did that switchback okay in practice, but on the opening lap I totally wiped out, delaying a bunch of people behind me. Once that was out of the way though, I had a good race. I was following some people and eventually passed them. I couldn’t quite get in touch with the leaders of the race but I had a pretty good run.
September 15, 2024
- Tech Guide
- Location: Canmore Nordic Centre Canmore
- Course: stravalink
It looks like they used the same course as for the Saturday’s Western Challenge, which I heard was a bit more technical than the pure power you needed to put down in Cochrane the weekend before.
First place in 2023. First place the day before. ↩︎
September 8, 2024
- Tech Guide
- Location: Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary - Cochrane
- Course: stravalink
The Peloton Cycling Club put on “Lampy’s Revenge” the day after Deadgoat Supercross on the same grounds but in the opposite direction, I believe1.
I had to go back to Edmonton so I wasn’t there for the race. ↩︎
September 7, 2024
- Tech Guide
- Location: Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary - Cochrane
- Course: stravalink
The ‘cross season has begun and I was there. The Deadgoat Supercross took place in Cochrane and we weren’t smoked out or anything.
The course was on the seminary grounds (just up the road from Cochrane BMX) and I was impressed with how twisty it was, especially how they fit the course all together without needing to cross any roads. While there were the requisite barriers to hop(/dismount and carry over) it was not a very technical course at all. By the afternoon it was going to be hot (30C), but my race was in the Novice class at 9:30, when there was still a tiny bit of the overnight chill in the air1.
February 1, 2024In 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.
November 11, 2023
- Tech Guide
- Location: Rutland Park, Calgary
- Course: stravalink
I missed out on writing this up at the end of the 2023 CX season, and now that 2024 has come around, I don’t have a bunch of the data I like to put in these race writeups. Nonetheless, here’s what I can find (thankfully I did do my CrossResults upload back when the race happened).
This race was postponed from earlier in the month because of some freakish weather. There was supposed to be a second race on the Sunday but with the rescheduling, that didn’t happen.
October 21, 2023
- Tech Guide
- Location: Snakes Head Natural Area, Sundre
- Course: stravalink
I missed out on writing this up at the end of the 2023 CX season, and now that 2024 has come around, I don’t have a bunch of the data I like to put in these race writeups. Nonetheless, here’s what I can find (thankfully I did do my CrossResults upload back when the race happened).
