Cyclocross tails

It's been a bit of an odd fall for me. A little bit of a rocky road to recovery, my last year of school (yippee) and many other trials and tribulations. Yesterday was the final race of the season for me, the last Alberta cyclocross race, and we finished up in style, the women's field anyways. My local Calgary based team, Terrascape Racing, hosted the event and strongly encouraged the wearing of a costume for the race. We had a tiger, Pamela Anderson, a couple of Juventis riders with orange hair, and I was a devil.

Considering that fact that Provincials and Nationals are over, we had really good turn out to our second annual race.


Coming back after taking two weeks of zero physical activity, it was very obvious that I had no high end left at all. On the positive side, I was very well rested. My first cross race was the Jim Horner UCI event up in Edmonton in which big hitters Wendy Simms and Kelly Jones showed up to, as well as the extremely fast local Pepper Harlton. Finished up in second place there, and refueled with a huge pasta dinner for the United Cycle race the next day. Was a little creaky getting going the next day, and very slow to start. Worked hard the entire race to reel in Pepper, but the powerhouse trackie/xc skier Tara Whiten was far from my grasps, and again I finished in second place.....but I won a pumpkin pie, so I was the real winner...hehe.


After a week of more riding (mainly too and from school) and lots of stretching, I came into Provincials the next weekend feeling pretty good. It was a really good course for me, rough and technical.....and with a lot less snow than last year, it was a really fun course. Battled with Pepper for the first couple of laps, and felt strong enough to put the gas on mid way through the race to take my first win of the season.


The following weekend, and last minute decision like last year, I made the trek out to Kamloops for Cyclocross Nationals. Waiting till after my school and Dallas's work were finished for the day, we left Calgary late and made it to Kamloops near mid-night. Spend the saturaday relaxing, doing homework, drinking coffee and doing a couple laps of the course. After a huge delicious Greek dinner, by 9pm, I could barely keep my eyes open, so I feel asleep and ended up having almost 12 hours of sleep....yeah, 12 hours....that was so nice.


I felt really strong at the start of the race, I could tell that my intensity was slowly coming back. Had a great start, but the first corner got the best of me and I went down hard. Quickly picking myself up, I was disappointed to have lost contact with the leaders, but fought hard to move up from around 15th to 4th place. Riding with Jeanann McKirdy and Kelly Jones for a couple laps, I found the energy and started pushing to see if I could catch the lead group who was pulling farther and farther away. I had put about 15 seconds into 5th and 6th, and found myself doing a 10 foot power slide on my butt around a greasy corner. Despite the fact that I gathered myself together quickly, I had lost any advantage I'd made. Riding with the Jeanann and Kelly for a lap, I pulled myself back together and forced the pace again. Wendy road an awesome race and took the title, Alison Sydor took second and Lynne Bessette finished third. I couldn't repeat my podium performance from last year, but I'm really happy with fourth place.


And now, this past weekend, raced the final race of the season. With Loni Kettle from Jasper breathing down my neck the entire race, I had to work very hard for the win. I'm always excited when she shows up to a race, because you know it's gonna hurt :)


Done now for the season, had a beautiful easy three hour road ride today, can't believe we're still having great weather and it's almost November...can't complain. But I am ready to start skiing. Oh yeah...and only six weeks left of this semester..yippee.

Back in the Saddle

After almost two weeks of a nearly sedintary lifestyle, in other words "forced rest", I was itching to do almost anything. Nearly two months following me little recovery ride crash, my small lower back injury decided enough was enough, and everthing stopped moving all together. Not a great feeling by any means, especially when you have to sit seven hours a day at school. But I'm happy to say, things are starting to feel much better......

Well, except for the fact that eveything else hurts now, (butt, legs, everything) after my first bike ride in how many days.....but hey, I'm definitely not going to complain about that :)

Yes...I'm still alive

Ok, ok, I know, I've been really pathetic with my updates the last month. No good excuse, just lazy. I've done lots of cool stuff, like getting lost in the Moab desert, mapping rocks around Canmore, ridden Logan's pass two days in a row with Dallas....and now, not so cool, but kind cool...back in school baby. It's my last year finally in my geology degree. It's been a long road...six years, not straight, to be exact....but I'm ready to move on from the school life for now.
I've been taking it really easy the last couple of days, not much riding or running, or anything, because I can barely move. My little crashs two months ago is coming back to haunt me in full force and I'm honestly not a happy camper right now. Going for a much needed massage on Sat, so hopefully I can get everything sorted out and ready for cross season which is fast approaching.

Till then....ciao

Le Tour de Bowness

Never knew four minutes could hurt so darn much. Nothing like a 1.2km hill climb to blast out every last corner of your lungs and make your legs burn. Starting with three up, I was paired up with Synergy's powerhouse Steph Rhoorda and BiciSport's time trialist Julie Beveridge. We started off relatively slow, knowing that you had to pace yourself well for this climb. I pulled out into the lead and set what I though was a pretty good pace. Then in the second of seven corners, Julie flew by my and put a good ten meters on me. I could hear Steph breathing hard behind, so I pushed the pace a little harder to try to keep the gap to a minimum. Slowly I felt Steph fall off, but I wasn't making any time into Julie. Coming into the last corner, I finally felt that I was starting to make small gains, so I popped it down one more gear, stood up and hammered up the last incline. I managed to pass Julie in the last corner and put almost 9 seconds on her. I have to honestly say, it wasn't really that fun, my teeth even hurt from breathing so hard.....but it did feel good to blast out the system. My time of 4 minutes 7 seconds was so close to the mens winning time of 3 minutes 19.....watch out Zack Bell, you're all mine next year.....hehe, only have to increase my wattage by at least 300 watts.

The second day of the Tour de Bowness, holiday monday, was a road crit on the lovely roads of Bowness encircling Bow Cycle. Great spectator turn out, lots of great riders, good festivities and great weather. Unfortunately there was a relatively small womens field, maybe 12 racers in the A and B combined. Quickly the race split into the A and B cats, we had a small pack of five girls in the A. Through out the entire race we stayed together, with lots of little attacks and sprints for the preems. I had to work really hard a couple of times to catch back onto the group, I'm not used to the really short, explosive attacks, takes me a little while to get up to speed. With some really fast and some really rough corners, the women's race managed to stay accident free...not so with the all of the men's cats. In the final sprint, I needed about ten more meters to make my mark, but I ended up in fourth place in the crit, and second place in the omnimum for the weekend.

After a couple of easy recovery days, my parents and I started the long drive south to Snowmass, CO. After about 20 hours of driving, made it safely. Pre-road the course yesterday, super long and really fun, lots of climbing, but also lots of single track and really great downhilling. It's gonna hurt tomorrow...yippee.

Howdy Y'all

Where y’all from? (with a southern accent) was the most popular question of the weekend. Spent this past weekend at the beautiful Sugar Mountain of North Carolina for the NMBS #5 race. After a long day of flying we arrived in Charlotte, NC, met up with Catherine and Kona rider Kris Sneddon (who was left without a ride) and proceeded to stuff three people, three bike boxes and all of our luggage into a rather small Jeep Commander. Those things look enormous from the outside, but it’s all an illusion. There was definitely an art in that packing job, and when the rental agent came back outside he just looked into the truck in complete disbelief, ‘I can’t believe y’all got that in there’….hehe. Our directions to Sugar Mountain weren’t spectacular, and we ended up taking a dark, foggy tour up the really steep and windy Beech Mountain, I imagine in the day time it’d be an amazing view. We finally managed to track down the huge ‘Kona’ house around midnight, nothing like a 16 hour travel day. We ended trading Kris his ride for a nights accommodation at there place, where there just happened to be two spare queen sized bed, thanks to Wendy Simms for her flight being late.

The course left something to be desired and was definitely not suited to me. Each lap started off climbing straight up the ski run on wet muddy grass, then continued climbing on open gravel and pavement roads for about a half an hour. The whole climb, you only ran into two small single track sections, the rest was just an open grind. Once you crested the summit, which was actually the very top of the ski hill, you finally got to the good stuff. The decent was really technical with lots of greasy rocks and roots, which would definitely lay claim to a lot of skin in the race. During the pre-ride I definitely struggled and fought with my bike the whole way through these sections, and the mud was treacherous and I re-tried numerous sections. With about a km and a half of decent left, we popped out onto the ski run again, and finished up with a full speed, open downhill sprint. During my second pre-ride lap in the rain, I managed to survive the gross technical rocky section only to lay it down in front of a large crowd on the slick grass (wasn’t very good for my already sore back).

Race day, the weather held out, and the course was in excellent shape for our three laps. Off the start, Georgia Gould and Catherine attacked, and the entire pack was strung out up the entire climb. I settled in and found myself riding with Wendy in about 14th position. She had more gas near the top and dropped me on the last pavement climb. I road the downhill a little sketchy, had some good saves and had to run a couple of sections, same as everyone around me. Going into the second lap, I could still see Wendy within about 25 m from me, and again near the top she had more gas and increased the gap. Near the top, I was passed by a Kenda rider and I followed her for the climb in the third lap. Half way up the last lap, a Cannondale rider past me, but I was able to react and hold her wheel till the top of the climb. She beat me into the single track, but I nailed the last decent and past both her and the Kenda rider..yippee. Finished in 13th place, and really sore from all the climbing. Catherine finished in third, being nipped by Willow Koerber in the last lap, for her first NMBS podium.
Sunday morning, got up early and went for a coffee shop spin…mmmmmm, coffee. The short track race wasn’t until 3pm, so spent the day relaxing and stretching. With a pretty good climb in the course, this was one of the most difficult ST courses that I’ve ridden in a while. Started off great, passed a lot of girls right away, but the climb killed me and I started blowing up after about 18mins, and lost two spots. I could see the leaders putting a large gap on the field, and with 2 laps to go I got pulled in 15th place. Although I was really disappointed with not finishing, my body was pretty happy with shortened race. Note for next year…practice climbing

My Nationals Curse

Well……. I’m pretty sure that I’ve had my fair share of bike drama now to last me for the rest of my cycling career, or at least I hope so.

This past weekend I was out on Vancouver Island for Canadian Mountain bike nationals in Mt Washington, BC. This was my second time up to Mt Washington (third time on the island), with the first being last year for Canada Cup finals. It’s a really quaint little mountain village, not very developed and not commercialized at all, with a really tough cross country course. The steep climbs and rooty descents are tough enough when it’s dry, but after days of heavy rain, all I can say is “ouch”.

Okay, a little touch on my bike drama, for those of you who haven’t heard; but I won’t go into the long gory details. Due to circumstances beyond my control, my bike was in bits and pieces up until an hour and a half before the start of the race. So needless to say, I had a very stressful 48 hours leading up to the race, and a very sleepless night; definitely not an ideal pre-race routine and I hope it doesn’t become routine. Thanks to the frantic help from Dallas the night before and from Ben from Shimano the morning of, everything got put together and I had a great working rig for the race. Needless to say, buy this point I was very mentally drained, which is something I have to work on because lets face it, things don’t always go smoothly.

Race time…..more than a little chilly (I swear I saw snowflakes) and more than a little wet, but hey, playing in the mud is always fun. It was a small but stacked women’s field, with all the big Canadian hitters in attendance, except Allison Sydor who seems to be moving towards the enduro events. Off the gun, Kiara pulls into the lead, and I grab her wheel as fast as I can. The first climb is a long double track climb straight up a ski run, which kicks up really steeply near the top. Due to the peanut buttery mud, everyone is forced to get off and push. At the top of this climb is a short technical uphill section followed by a short really steep open section which is tough enough when dry, so we are forced to run. By the time I reached the summit, my legs and lungs are on fire, but I’m sitting in a pretty good spot. The first technical descent I crash gently a few times, slide out on roots, front wheel getting swallowed by mud, nothing major, but definitely I don’t feel at ease. I finish the first lap in eighth position, with the next six spots really close in front. I’m not feeling great about how I’m riding, but I’m really happy that I’m managing to stay in contention, everyone is struggling with the conditions. Slowly however, my body seems to just want to shut down. Usually I’m really good with adverse conditions and being able to just slog through it, but not today. Every movement, every climb, every root, every mud puddle just seems to through me off, and my back is starting to seize up (courtesy of my smart recovery ride crash the week before). By the last lap I’m struggling to just finish the race. Somehow I manage to hold on to eighth place, but I have lost a lot of time on the girls in front of me.

I’m definitely not happy with my performance and how the weekend went. It’s really tough when you put so much effort and focus into an event and nothing seems to go right (which is maybe just my pessimistic post bad race attitude shining through because I did have a lot of fun), but at the same time, it’s these tough races and times that do make you a stronger athlete and person…..so not all is lost. Maybe next year I can crack my ever present nationals curse (which is all in my head) and get my redemption.

Canmore Canada Cup

Photo by Patrick Graham

Photo by Henry Yau

A few cool shots from a few cool locals..thanks guys.