It was always going to be a transition year.

2019 L&C Race

Wow - the last post on this blog was from five and a half years ago when I was having the best cycling season of my life! Quite a bit has happened since then, and I re-found this blog when I was looking for a bit of information from the past (which of course I didn't find lol). So a quick catch up since then:

2018

The rest of the year was a mix of some cyclocross races and a new way of training that bled into…

2019

I had what would probably be best described as my second best cycling season of my life. TL/DR, my power was the best ever but my weight had crept up. I did a whole host of local CAT 1 MTB racing, a touch of cyclocross, and some gravel racing.

2020

2020 CIRREM

Started the year with a canceled 24 Hours of old Pueblo Trip, some scary family health stuff, then the start of the Pandemic. The only race I did was CIRREM, and my heart just was not in it. The Pandemic introduced a whole host of stress related to work, family, and all sorts of other things that killed my mental state. Ended up trying to reboot the motivation by doing a “10 Laps” project which started with Swanson (success), and only got one more try in with Calvin Crest (only 8 laps) before my motivation tanked for that as well.

2021 Arkfeld Calvin Crest

2021

Had my first race back “after” the Pandemic with the Loess Hills Enduro which I Party-Paced it with James Krist. I did my first MTB race after the Pandemic at Calvin Crest for the Arkfeld series. I also attempted Gravel Worlds for the first time and only made it to 93 miles before cramps took over. I took on a new coach (Thanks Ken! - highly recommend Kilowatt Coaching!) for the second half of the year for a new style of training.

2021 Gravel Worlds Start

2022

I discovered Northwest Arkansas as a wonderful early spring training ground. Did the first race of the new NOS (Nebraska Offroad Series) local MTB races. Ended up doing only a handful of those due to sickness. Did Loess Hills Enduro again, and again at Party-Pace. Got an E-Bike for the first time. Did the first century on a road bike in a LONG time on one of the hottest days of the years. Then I stopped the coaching, and hardly rode the bike the rest of the year as motivation took another dump.

Back 40 in Northwest Arkansas

So that all brings us to 2023 - It was always going to be a transition year.

See in late 2022 I was in a whirlwind of applying for a position that would be a fairly substantial career move. That whirlwind was partially due to all the documentation and paperwork involved as this career move would see me employed by our Canadian division. Well in December I had accepted an offer, but my Passport had expired earlier that year so I had to get a fresh one before I could get my work Visa. Long story short, my expedited passport took 16 weeks to get to me. In the last 8 weeks of that I must have checked the mailbox at least twice a day. Yeesh.

So on April 1st (lol) I started my new role as Managing Director of SMO Canada. Since December of 2022 I knew that this role change would mean much more travel as I got used to the new role, so I allowed myself to call 2023 a “Transition Year”. Any racing I did would be a bonus, but my main focus was on the job. 

In 2023 I traveled nine weeks internationally for this role. Eight of those weeks were to Canada visiting customers in places such as Burlington, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Saguenay, and more in-between. One week was to Milan Italy for an International Management meeting.

I'm the chap trying to not squint in the bottom left

On top of that, Laura and I traveled to Rome to celebrate our 15th Wedding Anniversary and our 40th Birthdays!

Rome!

Don’t you worry though, I did make some progress in Bike Gear with a Promotion/40th B-Day gift (Thanks Honey!) of this lovely custom Kona Hei Hei that The Bike Way built up. I also upgraded the gravel bike with some Zipp/SRAM goodness.

So 2023 was one helluva year in a lot of aspects, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. That said, the bad habits I picked up during the Pandemic have lingered, and with the transition year done it is time to break those!

So - what in the world does 2024 bring? Well that is what I will cover in the next post. :)