Canadian Cycling Magazine

Grab a copy of the newest Canadian Cycling Magazine, page 34...hehe....
Thanks Dan Dakin :)

Crazy Busy Weekend

Battle Royal (aka ding dong battle)

photos from
reganpringleshoots

In the left corner, sporting the purple Frontrunners skin suit with the swanky new Ridley X-Night, with all bolts tightened and finally getting a warm up consisting of more then just pushing Tycho around, 3 time (I think that's right) Canadian cyclocross champion.........Wendy Simms!!!!
In the right corner, sporting the white (yikes!!!!) Trek Canada skin suit riding the not quite as new hot 2010 Trek XO2, with new lower tire pressure of 30 psi (yikes again !!) and the new wicked Bill Fry bike fit, gaining an extra inch of seat post.......Mical Dyck!!!!!

Racing with the big boys again....definitely great training that's for sure. It's funny, I didn't conscientiously plan to race just Wendy, but out of the first corner I ended up just 2 positions behind her and I was really motivated to try to stay on her wheel as long as I could. For the first couple laps she yo-yo-ed just in front of me....I had some sections dialed a little more cleanly and she had other sections better dialed.



About half way through I felt really strong so I attacked and pulled out ahead for a lap, and charged as hard as I could. She stuck to my wheel like gum, matching my corner speed, matching my straight away speed, matching my dismount/mounting....though slowly I noticed a small gap so I attacked again as hard as I could. Up and around a long sweeping uphill corner I was coming to the end of my attack, readying to settle back into the steady hard pace, getting ready to peek over my shoulder....when all of a sudden Wendy blew by me like I was standing still......What the!!!!! How the !!!!!!!

Shift, shift, shift....hammer to grab her wheel. I managed to stick with her for almost another lap, but noticed that I was starting to make more and more small mistakes...getting tired. Going over the barriers.... cleared the first one, knocked my wheel on the second one, clipped my shoe on the 3rd one....haha, that was a frantic stagger as I scrambled not to fall on my face......right in front of Regan taking pic's.....that woulda been a great shot though.



The last 20 mins I started fading and the gap between us slowly opened up and I think I finished about 30 seconds back....but didn't get lapped this weekend!!!!

Regan had an amazing race, taking his first cyclocross win!!!!! Watch out, a couple more of those and you may get the "gentle nudge"... hehe. Awesome venue for a cyclocross race, thanks to all the organizers and volunteers...........and thanks for the great garlic dog at the end of the race too.



After the race we bolted to Naniamo to catch the 5:45 ferry to Vancouver to catch the Murder City Devils show.....that was super cool show !!!

Kona Cross

I know, it's a lil late with this one....but better late then never right :)

Last weekend, Thanksgiving monday was the Kona Cross up in Naniamo, BC.....and it was one of the coolest, but toughest courses out there. Lots of climbing, lots of corners, lots of sand...what else, oh ya, lots of people. Record turn out with 134 people!!!!! That's awesome for an island cup race!!! I love it.

I decided the night before that if I had any chance with staying with Wendy at nationals that I'd better race against her as much as possible leading up it.....which means racing with the Expert Men. The women's race is usually about 40 mins long, so the extra 20 mins of the hour long men's race was guaranteed to be TOUGH!!!

I was able to hold my own off the road start...just barely....finding myself mid-back of the pack as we turned left to climb the tight steep switchbacks. As per usual when you hit the first singletrack in a large group, as soon as one person dabs, everyone is off running.

My main goal of the race was to not get lapped. It was a relatively long lap so I was pretty optimistic that I may be able to fend off the leading men. With 3 laps to go I saw the leading Craig Ritchey gaining time on me fast :( And he seemingly effortlessly passed me like I was standing still...thanks guy...hehe. With him passing me that dropped me down a lap, so I gave it all I had left...not much at this point.....for my final lap. Drew MacKenzie caught me half-way through the last lap, and Tyler Trace caught me just before going up the stairs right near the end of the lap. Finished 11th on my first Expert Men's race, and yup, that was definitely good training :)

reganpringleshoots

Regan had an Epic battle with Pro City's other ugly skin suiter Scotty, finishing 8th ;) Look at the cross monster I've created!!!!!

After the race we boogied back down to Victoria, and ate the biggest turkey I've ever seen!!!! Topped off with Pumpkin Cheesecake!!!! No wonder I was in a food coma for 3 days. So glad my second week of work was a short week :)


This weekend we have today, Sat to be bums and do all the Suzy Homemaker stuff, with the 3rd cross race of the Cross on the Rocks series in slightly up island in Duncan on Sunday. Workout for today is short and sweet...hopefully I can convince Regan to ride hard around a grass field, jumping on and off the bike!!!

Christmas came early!!!

Santa Dave and Mrs Brenda Claus surprised us early with a wicked new BBQ!!!! As some of you may know we don't have an oven, and I love cooking, so I've been perfecting my skills on the BBQ. At the beginning of the summer our wicked little 3rd hand-me-down generation Weber finally died......that was a sad day :( A frantic search through the many Victoria free ads and we found a nice looking little BBQ.....nice looking doesn't mean it works very well. Baking and just BBQing became a lot harder.....hehe....and I know my mom was worried that I wouldn't be able to make my BBQed christmas bread this year......so.......



Best new BBQ initiation, Red Barn beef bacon directly on the grill....oh my goodness!!!



Now I gotta bake pumkin muffins, apple crisp, banana bread, pistachio cookies.......