I recently purchased Transition 2. A video about Americans racing cross in Belgium. It was a bit of an interesting video with some questionable footage put in. But it portrays fairly well what North Americans go through while racing over there. The biggest thing that hit me were some things that the American coaches said:
Noel Dejonckheere, US National U23 Road Team Director:
The level in Europe is maybe 5% higher. This 5% is not easy to bridge. If you don’t do a lot of races when you are young at a high level, it’s very hard to close the gap. Closing the gap it’s work, it’s only a few percent up, it’s close, but it’s hard. It’s only a few percent, but those 2-3% are so hard to close. If you don’t do that when you’re young you have a very small chance to make it.
So it kind of makes you really want to go for it. To think that those few percent get harder to close the longer you wait. And the more, bigger races you do the faster those last few percent will come. Hmmm….
My only excuse is that I am lazy. Before Christmas when I made the video of Per’s cross race in the snow and my training video, I couldn’t get enough footage to make all the videos and have all the fun I was having. But ever since I got back from Belgium I had lots of footage, but had never actually put anything together. So here is a very old video now of training in Victoria this spring. It was a blast and I think I did a pretty good job. As with all my videos though, towards the end I just finished and didn’t put in the real effort. Anyways, enjoy!
But I realized this is a symbol of the I have felt in the last 7 months. I have just been kind of lazy. I once aspired to be a great chef. I made some great meals, but soon fell into the routine of a simple chicken or steak or something and a salad. Not great chef-ness to say the least.
And I yearned to have a laser palate. I loved wine and wanted to taste everything and be able to talk about it and enjoy it. For a while it almost got to the point where I didn’t want any at all. It was almost the same with coffee after working at Transcend for a while. Eeeshk. The things I once loved no longer had a place in my life.
Hence, I am trying to bring back the romance and take the time to sit down and enjoy these great mysteries. So enjoy my video and look forward to more culinary and cinematic experiences here at sadamson!
There are times when I do everything in my power to avoid traffic when I’m riding my bike. And there are times when I actually enjoy riding through all the cars.
I definitely consider myself aggressive when I’m in traffic and probably scare drivers more than they scare me. The best thing for a driver to do is just keep doing what you’re doing. I can’t stand it when a driver tries to be nice and lets you through when you shouldn’t be let through and wrecks the whole flow of cars. And I can’t stand it when a car rushes around in front of you to get to a red light.
Sometimes cars make me angry enough to want to do something, but not usually. Except it seems that recently I have been not having good luck with cars. A couple days a big truck bumped me with his mirror and then laid on the horn. Why? Because I was just rolling along at red light.
And then yesterday I was doing a start on 109st. And a guy was turning right onto my path. He had a red light, but certainly did not attempt to stop. He was at least halfway into my lane by the time he came to a halt. I would have been fine, except that there was a car beside me on my left. I did a little one-footed dance and almost fell on the first car.
I don’t know what’s going on?!?!? Are all the cars out to get me now?
I haven’t hurt that bad in a really long time. Last night I did the longest, hardest ride I have done in a long time. By the time I got home I writhing in agony. My mom thought I was dying or something.
It felt great!
I really suffered which I took as a positive. I don’t feel like I’ve really suffered in a race for a long time.
And I managed to clear up some thoughts I’ve been having about my future. Last week Andy told my dad that for me to make it to the next level, I need to move out of Alberta. But what does that mean? What do I want to do with cycling? Am I going to o pro? How hard do I want to try? What do I want to be really good at? Lots of questions, lots of thoughts, no answers.
But I think Bruce and I cleared some stuff up last night. I want to be a cyclocross racer. But that means you have to good at road racing too. Look at Sven Nys, Greg Reain, Jon Page. They are all good road racers.
So I guess I didn’t resolve anything, but I know more what I want to do and how I want to go about trying to achieve it.
I had a decent weekend of track racing in Calgary. It was the first time I didn’t do sprint events hoping to ride better in the endurance ones. It didn’t really work.
I had a decent pursuit. Not as even as Edmonton earlier this year, but much faster.
Then I managed to have a terrible scratch race. I did not race smart at all and spent way too much energy and had nothing for when I really needed it. But don’t worry, Peter reemed me out for that. I have to thank him for everything he has taught me in racing this year. It’s been great!
And I was able to take that and race the points race much smarter. Still not perfect and I had pretty much nothing for legs, so I didn’t do great, but it was more fun.
I finished with the Keirin, and almost qualified for my first final. I was supposed to stay on Joel’s wheel, but when he squeezed by Graeme I got a little scared and couldn’t quite come around for third. Oh well. It was good. And quite possibly my last race until cyclocross season…
There has always been something about this race that I’ve loved.
It may be that my first time was my first real crash.
Or it may be that my second time was my first win as a cat 3.
Or it may just be something else.
Anyhow, I like the format of the hill climb. And despite never having a good result I was fairly optimistic. That was short-lived though, as Chris McNeil was able to drop me about halfway up the climb and I staggered in whoppingly slow.
Oh well, onto the crit. I felt good at the start and had good position. When the first prime came around I was in fourth on Cyrus, Symmetrics, and Jamie. I came really far inside on the last corner and attacked it. I was able to hold it pretty easily to the line for $100! Then the second prime came soon after and I was just recovering a little bit. The pace was high as the break was trying to establish itself and I was chasing and working hard. Guys were coming around just a little too fast for me to jump on their wheel, so I ended up getting dropped and pulled about halfway through. But I came out with money and knowing that I really do still know how to suffer!
Congrats on a great ride by Jamie, who was outplayed, outmanned, outgunned, by Erker and Zach, but hung on for a great third place. And the funny thing is the 5 man podium gave away no provincial medals…
Every time I hear a truck go by outside I get excited and hope it's the UPS truck with my @van_dessel GNTs... but alas, not yet ........................................ 9 hours ago
First September I'm not going back to school... starting to sink in and it feels kind of weird ........................................ 10 hours ago
::SA
::SA
