Since I wasn’t on the ball enough to write a post about every race this spring/summer 2017 season, I’ve decided to write an overview of the whole season finishing with this weekend (track provincials).

December 2016-March 2017

This marks the start of the track season for us! With nationals now in April, even though us Victoria riders train through the summer on our velodrome, we also get to train through most of the winter for the track. Which in my eyes is pretty lucky. As the Westshore Velodrome is outdoors we traveled to the Burnaby velodrome every month starting in December for training camps. Though I had been cycling for about five years, I still had never done a real training camp. The camps were super well organized, and I learned so much and gained a lot of confidence on the bike.

As well as training on the bike, this season I was attending the Canadian Sport School Victoria where I was getting sprint, gymnastics, and strength training as well as weekly seminars on a variety of topics related to a life in high-performance sport. In being part of this program my confidence on and off the bike grew in leaps and bounds as well as my physical strength.

Nationals (March 31-April 2, 2017)

After months of anticipation, we finally headed off to Milton, Ontario, on March 28.  A few of my teammates had already been to Milton to race a couple of times and from what they had told me this track was amazing. And let me tell you that was no understatement.

After a couple of training sessions on the track we began the weekend of racing. I learned so much from my teammates and coaches and loved every second of it. It was great to get to race girls from all around the country. I’m really happy with how all of my races went, and I definitely learned that taking risks in your races is worth it.

After a long weekend of racing, we headed home to Victoria for a well deserved week off, with a stop in Toronto and Niagara Falls on the way back.

April 2017

After a week off the bike, it was time to start the summer track and road season. When I got home I was met with the news that my new bike was in! It’s the 2017 Scott Addict and I was given it as a loaner for this season from Wayne and Pam’s Performance Bicycles. I love this bike so much, it has great shifting, and feels super fast. And to top it all off, it’s the most used bike of Orica Scott!

May – June 2017

During the summer, our team trains on the road and the track. I don’t enjoy the road as much as I do the track so I didn’t do too many road races this season. In May, I did the Cameron Law road race and tt which went really well. I did a lot better than I was expecting, and after struggling in road races last season with my asthma this was a nice way to start the 2017 season. The following weekend we headed over to Penticton for the Hayman Classic. For the past few years it has been the provincial championships but the organizers are trying to make it a bigger event and this year some teams even flew in from Ontario! It was great to get to race some girls from other parts of the country. The Hayman Classic had four stages this year. A hill climb, a circuit race, a crit, and a road race. The hill climb was done on a 12 km point to point course. The first 11 km were rolling and with the exception of a few attacks the group was fairly calm and just waited for the climb to determine the placing. My legs weren’t feeling as good as they had been the previous weekend, but I still surprised myself and was happy with how I did. After the hill climb was my favourite race of the weeknd: the circuit race. It was held on a car race track but unlike Western Speedway in Victoria it had lots of twists and turns and though it’s fairly flat there are some ups and downs. I think the reason I liked this race the best was because it was so different from any other one I have done. The road was super smooth and none of the corners were very sharp as it is built for cars. The next two races were the crit and road race which they have had in the series for a couple years so I was already familiar with the courses. I didn’t do as well as I had hoped in either of them, but I definitely learned a lot!

July 2017

Once school came to a close, me and my family headed off to England to visit my great aunt and Wales, France, Germany, and Austria to do some sight seeing. We even got to see a stage of the Tour de France!

 

Once back in Victoria I had less than a week of training and then we were off to road provincials in Vancouver. I did pretty much as expected after having no training for a couple weeks, but it was a lot of fun and I’m glad I went.

August 2017

After provincials I was able to get into somewhat of a routine for my training and got to start doing my summer lifting program from Sport School on a regular basis. It was nice to be able to get back into the groove of lifting, but my body could definitely tell it had been a while. As well as my normal practices and lifting I also did a couple of the Oak Bay Bikes group rides. They were very, very hard, but getting to ride in a pack that large is really good practice and when you are with riders who are mainly faster than you it forces you to conserve as much energy as possible and make sure you’re fueling yourself properly which are very important skills to learn.

Leading up to track provincials we had a week-long training camp where we fine tuned our positions on our bikes, practiced tactics, and much more. The week was very tiring especially as I went into it with tired legs. There weren’t many girls racing this weekend which is always disappointing, but our group made up for that with some very exciting races. I got a Victoria track PB in the 500 and 200 but not in the pursuit, but I wasn’t expecting it as it was the very last event of a very tiring week.

Now I have a couple weeks off and then it’s cross season! Hopefully I’ll have another post once cross starts!

Casey