It’s the middle of winter, so what better time to sit back and remember the warmer days of the cycling season? Except that for me cycling season never really ends: there’s the outdoor season and the indoor season. And in Calgary, the indoor season is the longer of the two…
The indoor season started with a bang this year. There was an very busy Zwift calendar with the club, and I attended almost all the rides. There were also longer (100+ km) virtual rides that pushed my January numbers over 1000 km for the first time. I didn’t get outdoors until March, when I rode to the office to unpack my cubicle after the renovations. That was followed quickly by a real ride with Phil and Paul and then the Ronde van Cowtown in April. The Ronde was one of the highlights of the season, but even the winter virtual riding didn’t spare me the pain I felt after doing it. The spring weather in Calgary is unpredictable, so you have to roll with it.
Also in the early parts of the year, I took the plunge and signed up for the Tour de Victoria with Ian. At the time we were still unvaccinated but the promise was there. Where the Ronde was the first highlight of the year, the TdV was the last, and was brilliant.
The weather wasn’t the only unpredictable thing, though: right on the eve of the 2021 BCC season, COVID slammed on the brakes. We had another delayed start, but that gave me the freedom to try something new, like cycling to Canmore. But eventually the pandemic abated (for a while) and the weather got hot. We had only 1 or 2 rides cancelled due to rain this year. More were cancelled due to poor air quality. One of the days of the worst air quality in Calgary was the best day of the season, because the air in the mountains was clear for the BCC ride from Banff to Moraine Lake.
2021 marked a first for me: a new kind of riding. After a very long delay, I got my new gravel bike in late July. I managed to join in a handful of gravel rides before the end of the season, and I’m looking forward to more next year. We bid farewell to Ian’s Cube mountain bike: another out the door to Michelle and her family.
August saw us in Victoria, but not for the Tour this year. That wasn’t until October. But I did ride a fondo in August: the Gran Fondo Badlands was also pushed back later than usual. After a complete lack of organized fondos in 2020, it was great to participate in them again.
Tammy and Miranda didn’t re-join the BCC for 2021, but when Miranda got her job at Abbey’s, she got to be a participant of sorts in the last, biggest ice cream ride of the season. Ian also rode his new MTB a lot this year with Josh and Joey, and even did a few rides with me in prep for the TdV.
But even before the TdV, things started to wind down for the year. September saw regular weekend rides, but weekdays came to an end (except for MTB and gravel: make a note to participate more in the shoulder season next year!). One could argue that I pushed the season too far when I had a crash on ice in early December, but I mostly escaped unscathed.
The last milestone of the year was today: I reached 11,000 km total distance and 100,000 meters of total elevation gain. I pushed for the last one from early December, when Brenda (a new member of the club) posted that she’d reached her goal of 200,000 m climbing for the year. I checked my own numbers, saw that I was close-ish to 100,000 (88,000) and decided to climb a lot in Zwift in December. This morning, I crossed the line. Tomorrow’s a day off, and then the year starts all over again.
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