October 15, 2023Race Info
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I had hoped to do more racing this year, but it turned out that four was what I could handle with my work and other life commitments. So the second day of Baby Walter Cross was my season closer.
The course this year went the opposite direction of 2022 which I think I preferred. The climbing of the stupid hill was still tough, but the descents weren’t terrifying and we got to skip the runup in favour of a singletrack descent (with roots that were highlighted but you needed to dodge).
September 30, 2023 Race Info
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I came into this race knowing that last year’s Puncheur Cross was my favourite. Unfortunately I had a training crash the Tuesday before this race, which put me in kind of a bad place. Mostly scraped up, but also a bit of a bruised wrist and some bruised ribs. I figured I’d be okay to race still, but I wasn’t setting my expectations too high.
September 16, 2023 Race Info
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I was so happy this race wasn’t taking place in Argyll Park this year. I hated the downhill that someone broke a collarbone on last year and lost so much time on it. Capilano Park was near my house and I could practice on it. But I didn’t practice hard enough on wet enough grass, because hoo boy did I not do well on that terrain.
September 2, 2023 Race Info
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Tubs on Tubs Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius Prestige was the race that was going to open up the 2023 ABA CX season. And it did for the Novice Men, Sport Men and Sport Women categories, but sadly, the AQHI hit 11 and the afternoon races had to be cancelled (along with the next day’s entire Velocity CX Race).
But I got my race in, and it was really fun! I was fighting for a good position at the beginning and because I was pushing too hard on the off-camber turns, I wiped out a bit in the long grass. Then coming out of the big downhill I cut the corner a little too close and got caught up in the course tape, which cost me time.
July 9, 2023 Our club put on a criterium and in my effort to try out a few different kinds of racing (despite being a slowpoke) I entered. I rode in the Citizen class again because that’s the type of license I got for the season. This time there were three riders instead of two at the Stieda race earlier. The other guys (despite being in Citizen where all genders can enter, we were all dudes) had raced the day before with the iGregari SugarBoddy Criterium, which was on the same course but in the opposite direction.
May 27, 2023 We only had two people in my category for this race. The category being Citizen, which is supposed to be a mixed gender, less intense beginner kind of racing. The other guy, Keith, was also part of my cycling club but he said he was only in this class by mistake. He was confused and could probably have been in the Mens’ Category 4. But there we were.
We got to start with the Women Cat 4 group which was awesome. They pushed me hard and did all the work so I just had to hang with the bunch. And I did. I went the fastest I’d ever done 40km.
October 15, 2022 I was the last competitor across the line in the Novice class of the Zombie Baby Walter Cross race. But a bunch of people had been lapped or did not finish, so I wasn’t actually in last place. It’s funny how that feels.
It’s not so funny how it feels to wipe out trying to turn while sliding down a grassy hill. Which I did. But I kept going, gritting my teeth while kids in my race were bunny-hopping the barriers.
October 2, 2022 I loved the Devon Puncheur race. I also love that it got a writeup entitled The Best Grassroots Cyclocross Race You’ve Never Heard of I hadn’t been to Devon, which is just southwest of Edmonton, before this race, but Voyageur Park was a really nice example of this region’s river valley terrain. The course went through the trees, around a flat corkscrew feature, down by the river and was my introduction to sand on a ‘cross course.
September 17, 2022 My second race of the 2022 cyclocross season was presented by the Juventus Cycling Club at the Argyll Velodrome. Not in the velodrome itself, but the park surrounding it. When I was looking at the map in the preceding days I wasn’t sure where the ups and downs and how it would work as a course. There was a toboggan hill. Were we going to have to up that? Down it?
September 2, 2022 I returned to cyclocross in 2022, and went back to the same race in the same park. I’m not sure if that makes this a classic or not.
I’d tested this course beforehand. My house is just across the river from the “indestructible Strathcona Science Park” so this was where I’d been riding up and down hills and practicing my off-cambers the week before.
