A new chapter
The cat is out of the bag!! After 5 amazing years of partnership with Specialized, it is with much excitement that we announced this past week that Canyon was our new title sponsor.
It's important for me to say that Specialized have offered us incredible support throughout our 5 year partnership, and I'll forever be grateful to them. It was with them that I've achieved the biggest highlights of my career so far. We've created friendships there that I hope will outlast our official partnership for many years.
Why the change, then? Canyon is a young and very dynamic company. They approached us with an incredible offer that was hard to look past. But two things stood out and made the difference for me. For one, Canyon has a strong, burning case of the CX Fever. This shared passion for cyclocross was important for me, because it is the one discipline that holds my heart and my dreams. The second thing? When I asked Canyon what other events were important for them, they replied: "Whatever puts a smile on your face and some pain in your legs are going to be the most important to us". I know I'm at my best when I am happy, so having the freedom to pursue events that excite me, while knowing that this would be good enough to my main sponsor simply felt right! Both David and I are very eager to build this relationship with Canyon and to achieve big things together.
Along with the Canyon announcement, we've also announced other new exciting partners.
First, came Zipp wheels! We've been partners with SRAM for years, and they truly feel like family to us, so adding Zipp felt natural. Plus, ZIPP wheels were my first ever "cycling equipment crush" as a young athlete...and damn! They've only gotten better, and prettier over the years! So this is exciting!
Bivo bottles is another new partner. Bivo is a family owned company from Vermont and they make stainless steel bottles. David and I have goals to reduce our environmental footprint, and this partnership was a step in that direction. Can we do a full season with only 8-10 bottles?! And keep those for another year? And another? Let's see!! Read more about partnership here. We're even going to launch a special custom bottle together, stay tuned.
More new partners will be announced this week on Instagram, so catch next week's newsletter to know more about them.
We're excited to start this new journey and share our adventures with you all!
First race: Grasshopper series!
The Grasshopper adventure series is a popular local race series in California. Some editions are on the gravel bike. some on the MTB, and what they have all in common is they take you on an adventure loop in beautiful location, and you eat a great lunch afterwards! Sounds like fun to me.
David and I spent the last 2 months in Santa Cruz, California for training. We had planned to go spend the day in San Francisco to play tourists, as well as to meet chef Matthew Accarino and eat at his famous restaurant SPQR. So when we saw that there was a Grasshopper Mountain bike race in Lake Sonoma (1.5h away) the next day, we decided to sign up.
Lake Sonoma was absolutely beautiful! We camped there in the van the night before and Mia got to swim in the lake. The course was climbing an almost ridiculous amount, but the good thing about it was that it brought gorgeous views of the area, and we got to descend on fun trails lined with colourful flowers!
Learning from my mistakes
This was going to be my first race on my Canyon LUX. Last April, I found myself being extremely fit in March and April, following the cyclocross season. But, as May rolled up, I started being fatigued and constantly having heavy legs. This started a summer pattern of : being extremely fatigued, taking time off, having a few days of feeling good..then feeling extremely fatigued again...and we'd start over. It was annoying and counter productive. The last nail in the coffin came when I caught covid and then I could never recover, until I had to take 2 months completely off during the cyclocross season. Needless to say, this whole thing was far from ideal! So this year, we're trying a different approach. I did not do any single interval this spring. Instead, I rode fun miles, and built a good base in the gym, and my goal will be to progress all year so I can perform at a very high level come September. I'll still race in the summer, but I've learned I can't overdo it and be top at all times.
The race
This brings us to the start of the Grasshopper yesterday morning! I was excited to take my new Canyon mountain bike into its first race, but I truly had no clue how my body would respond to this intensity. And let me tell you, them California people are STRONG! The race started on a 10minutes road climb. The pace was fast and damn! I felt like crap. I knew it was important to position myself well for the upcoming 20 minutes up and down single track, but all I could manage was very average placing, resulting in lots of walking behind people on that singlet rack. I eventually found a rhythm, and met up with my friend Caitlin. We rode the first lap of the race together and that was fun. We were sitting 2nd and 3rd place in the women. On the second lap, I had already figured out that I didn't have much speed in my legs, but what I was able to do was to ride a solid steady pace. So I settled into my own steady pace and passed many people. My left quad eventually cramped on the last steep AF* 10 min climb...gosh! This makes you appreciate those days when you are fit and you can do anything! I had to slow down a bit, but rode in to finish second to a fast Maude Farell.
The good news is that my bike performed much better than my body! Plus, I had fun and it felt good to push hard for the first time since February. Other good news? We won a really nice bottle of win on the podium, from local winery Arnot-Rogers! I guess it was worth the cramp!
Mia really loved the weekend...she was free-dogging most of the time and had a blast meeting all these cool people and hunting little creatures in the grass all evening. She hopes all race weekend from now on will include a night of camping!
We're racing the Sea Otter classic this coming weekend!
Cheers and stay tuned for all kinds of fun announcement coming up :)