May 30, 2023I joined a cycling club in 2023 and we have a coach. I have never had a coach before. I haven’t ever really done sports so I don’t know what a coach is supposed to do. But Kevin seems earnest and nice and is trying so hard to be helpful.
Before this season’s first race he held a racers’ meeting to go over the course using veloviewer and to talk about tactics and what we should be doing before a race. I was at work that night, so I asked if he’d be able to record it and he did. He talked about wind directions and planning and prep and where to attack the group if we had the legs.
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.
November 12, 2022 I rode cyclocross races in 2022 but they didn’t feel like cyclocross. They aren’t muddy and cold. Part of that was due to the boiling frog that we are as a planet but part of that is due to living in Edmonton, where we don’t really get shoulder seasons. The abrupt floompf of winter that happened on November 2 starts fatbike season, not a time for racing in mud, like in Europe (or even Victoria, which is where the Canadian nationals are going to be happening in November).
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.
May 9, 2022 My knee went pop in the last 7km of the ride and Mike who I’d been riding with left me behind. It was all right though. I was going to finish my first road race. And yes, I was slow, but that was okay.
results
#