Cartwheels and Cake – Adventures in nature & dessert eating

The end of the beginning (CX)

So, I’ve wrapped up my first ever cyclocross season! A season I didn’t plan to have until about a week before it started (and, even then, I only thought I’d be doing a handful of races). Warning, this post looks long (and it kinda is) but that’s mostly because of all the pictures – and because I wanted to sum up my season somewhere so I wouldn’t forget!

After starting in Cat 4, I had a forced cat up to Cat 3 mid-season. This meant that I’d race cat 3 for the last four races in CYCLO X series … Continue reading

Tour Divide

Let it be known that this is the day I started seriously considering racing the Tour Divide in 2023. Will it happen? No idea. But I’m seriously thinking about it.

That’s all. That’s the post. Let’s see what happens in 7 months 😏

This is 36

Well. The second birthday in a row where I’m getting ready for a race. However, last year I was prepping for 200 miles of gravel at Rexy whereas this year I’m just throwing together some warm clothes for tomorrow’s 8:15AM cyclocross race at Broomfield.

Today started with Trader Joe’s pumpkin waffles (with whipped cream!), continued with some work, moved on to virtual coach training with Tim Cusick and the BaseCamp team (so good!), and continued with a beautiful bike ride up Sunshine (openers for tomorrow).

Tonight we thought about getting sushi, but decided to do that tomorrow and enjoy some … Continue reading

Falling, sliding, crashing, and winning

Before the Cyclo X series started I headed out for another Wednesday afternoon race in the Back 2 Basics series. This time I entered in the Women’s B field, and found myself starting with about 17 women. It had been windy and rainy during the pre-ride but by the race conditions were pretty great.

Awkwardly trying to hop a barrier at B2B

I managed to finish 6th out of 17 women which I was really happy with! The course had a lot of single track and tight turns which equaled much needed practice for me. The barriers went okay too, … Continue reading

Slip sliding into cross with both feet!

For the past couple years I’ve heard of this sub-sport of cycling called cyclocross. People always describe it as a cross between mountain biking, road biking, and steeplechase, so that’s how I described it too. That is, until recently when someone finally asked me exactly what is steeplechase… to which I mumbled something about horses and barriers and then admitted I wasn’t exactly sure and stopped using that reference.

So what is cyclocross (usually just called “cross” or “CX”)? I’d say it’s a totally ridiculous, fun, and exhausting 25-60min race where you ride your bike as fast as you can … Continue reading

RPI 2022: Year 2!

Last December Paul convinced us to return to Rebecca’s Private Idaho: Queen’s Stage Race. It was our first big gravel race in 2021, and we learned a ton. The hope was that we could apply some of what we learned to do better this year!

While we both fully recovered from COVID, thankfully, we had lost out on a LOT of training in July. That left us just 4 weeks to really train (which was not enough time). So we headed out to Idaho as better racers, but less fit than in 2021, to see what would happen.