Summer is nearly upon us, and the club had a great May, filled with all sorts of rides and races.
The prime riding season is upon us, and we continue to add more and more rides as our Ride Leaders start tackling more and more rides.
Monday MTB at the Hydrocut kicked off in early May (and then was hampered by rain a few times). In addition to the Monday club ride, there’s also a shared King Street Cycles and WCC Ladies only ride on Mondays.
Tuesday Road HIIT continues as usual. Coming back from a long hiatus, we have had some challenges with group size and number of groups. (Generally speaking, more groups, and smaller groups work best.) A few weeks back Dawn volunteered to help marshall the groups leaving the parking lot, and it’s been quite successful. Having just a dozen or fewer riders per group makes for a better ride, and having more groups also allows for finer delineation between the groups. Though obviously there is overlap in the groups.
Wednesday gravel is still going strong. Although this ride continues throughout the year in one form or another, it’s definitely getting more participants with the good weather.
Or at least, mostly good weather:
Thursday nights we’ve got MTB skills, and road fast and intermediate rides.
The skills ride is all about learning new skills and practicing skills you’ve got, to make your trail riding more successful. It’s been happening mostly at Riverside Park in Cambridge, which has a pump track that’s excellent, and other varied terrain for those nights where the track is closed.
On the road side, Thursday Fast and Intermediate continues, with typically three groups heading out for the Elora or Fergus loops. The intermediate ride has begun as well, with new routes (or repeats of popular ones) each week.
Friday brings the Earlybirds MTB ride. So far we’ve just had one ride. We generally wait until sunrise reaches 6 am, and then we’ve had the trails closed a few times since then.
Yeah, 6 AM is pretty early, especially if you’re waking up at like 5 am to be able to ride to the start. But come on, that sunrise looks worth it, no?
Weekends are busy as usual. Saturdays bring Road fast and intermediate, often two gravel groups, and occasionally some MTB rides, depending on ride leaders. Sundays can be quieter, but we’ve had a few rec road and gravel rides in May.
Sunday Fun-venture. May 8th we had an urban adventure ride. WE ended up with 4 very distinct bikes on the ride: a CX bike, a front suspension gravel bike, hardtail MTB, and full suspension MTB.
Road: For the first time in a couple years the regular road race season is underway. Faction, WCC and our local youth team KW Cycling Academy have all been represented at every race so far.
May 1 - Calabogie Classic
This one is a far drive, but the M1 Faction team made the trip and Adam Myers took third place with Jason Chai-Onn just behind in fourth and Ray Lee in sixth.
May 21 - Northumberland Classic
E4 - First - Lucas Goertz (KW Cycling Academy)
M3 - First - John Taylor (KW Cycling Academy)
- Third - Adam Hawley (WCC) with some help in the form of a leadout from Luke Ehgoetz.
E3 - Second - Ethan Powell (KW Cycling Academy)
- Fifth - Wesley Hill (KW Cycling Academy)
M1 - Sixth - Jason Chai-Onn
Many more athletes participated, especially on the KW Cycling Academy side.
Gravel: May 7th saw the start of the Substance Projects Ontario Gravel series, Scrappy Badger. Three of us made the trek to Baltimore, with Andrew Lambert taking 5th Overall in the long course (80 km), and Chris Karley taking 9th in Open men in the 40 km.
May 15th was the Tour of Kincardine. IT’s something of a hybrid gravel/cx/mtb race. It’s pretty much an urban adventure race through the trails of Kincardine, where each bike type will have benefits and drawbacks. Andrew Lambert took the top place overall:
MTB: With 2 Ontario Cups completed the Waterloo Cycling Club supported race team Faction tackled challenging courses and a variety of weather conditions. With strong representation across many categories the ladies found themselves on the podium with Kerry 2nd in Master Sport 34-45 and Lisa taking 2nd in Master Expert.
May 28th, 3 racers took on the Superfly Racing Spring Epic 8 hour. Oliver finished a strong 3rd after a long day with a lot of elevation in the SOLO male under 40 category. Tim & Kerry were back to their usual style riding as a mixed tag team, finishing 3rd as well.
Learn To Group Ride kicked off in late May, after suffering one week of rain cancellation. Mind you, the weather wasn’t great on the 25th, but we still had somewhere around 30 participants and enough ride leaders to split into four small groups. The focus was on riding in a close group, and communication (calling out potholes, signaling turns and stops, etc).
Week 2 had better weather, a move to Laurel Heights Secondary School as the start location, and an even better turnout of maybe 40 new members.
And of course, once again a big thanks to all our ride leaders, both for leading regular rides, as well as those coming out to support Learn To Group Ride.
