A Mini CX Season- Crop Tops, Beers, City Riding, and Trying New Things

We recently caught up with one of our Revel Team Riders, Zoe Zwecker, and she told us about a pretty exciting new venture she took up this summer that pushed her beyond her comfort zone but also reignited her love for the sport of cycling...

I have always been exactly as dramatic as I sound. That is to say, this past summer was relentless. Between working a very full time job, trying to race at high (ish) level, and maintaining some sense of my 25 year old self; life was chaotic at best. The midnight oil was gone and as summer came to a close, I grew restless with imagination and desire for something new again: something for fun and for no one else but me.

Cyclocross (CX) has been on my radar for years but after busy summers of traveling and racing, I didn't have it in me to extend my race season further. But this fall, the idea of racing cyclocross with my girlfriends felt both restorative and rejuvenating . 

Taking advantage of the remaining fall daylight, I spent September and October sneaking out of work (a little) early and heading to Valmont, Boulder’s local bike park, to work on developing some of my CX specific skills. I felt like my fitness was relatively fine for CX racing after training all summer, but my skills were glaringly lacking. At Valmont, I would practice things like dismounting my bike, hoping over imaginary barriers, and running up stairs. I was well acquainted with technical mountain biking or grinding out 100+ mile days but these things were all foreign to me.

Earlier this Spring, I coached the Senior girls from the Boulder Junior Cycling Club (BJC)  in mountain biking and road riding. So imagine my embarrassment when in my second week of practicing my new CX skills, I came across them or rather, they came across me. They were much more experienced with CX skills than I was and I felt an immediate sense of embarrassment. As luck would have it, and with good natured jest, some of the girls came up to me, and laughingly critiqued how poorly I was executing these technical skills. Eventually, the whole team came over, teasing their coach as I fumbled about. In that moment, rather than making excuses, leaving, or giving up, I choose to release my ego and lean into learning something new. I shamelessly allowed myself to disrupt their practice to get tips, and to ride hot laps around the park on their wheels while they filled me in on the latest team drama, most recent race result, and wooes of high school.

It’s hard, as a competitive human and athlete, to remove yourself from your ego; to lean into new things, to be open minded about growth, and to enjoy the process. I always get caught up in these things. But at the end of the day, I think I was able to be a role model for these athletes- to show them it's OK to be bad at something, to accept help, and to just do things for fun on the bike!

Then it was time for my first race. Cyclocross races are about 45 minutes long of full gas riding and running around. Like all sports in Boulder,  even the “casual race series” is full of pros or ex pros leading to competitive fields of riders. Rather than feeding into my natural state of competitiveness,  I made it my mission to use Cyclocross to dig deeper to understand why it is that I love riding and racing bikes and allowed myself to race to take risks. I discovered CX is all the parts of racing I love: pushing yourself to the absolute limit, being smart on the bike, and testing technical skills. I loved that I was losing because of skills not fitness and that felt motivating and empowering to tackle with a little practice. I felt proud when I improved from 1st in Cat 4 to 7th in the Open field and then 2nd in the Pro field.

Most importantly perhaps, cyclocross also gave me a reinvigorated sense of bike exploration. Being predominantly an endurance racer, my training often involves long multi hour rides into the mountains, often alone and without cell service or signs of many other people nearby. These days were all consuming in length but rewarding in the pristine nature I got to experience. However, I also became disillusioned with the beauty and nature right in my backyard, and in the streets of my city. Training for cyclocross consisted of rides with friends where we ran up stair cases in the middle of Boulder, made pretend courses out of water bottles, and practiced hopping barriers over down trees in the secret single track of town. Sometimes we would drink a beer in the middle as “training” for the handups (a tradition in the CX world where spectators hand racers beer, shots, or something gross to eat during the race- all fun and spirited) that we might participate in during a race. When training together, we would push each other- racing up hills or doing sprint starts then provide technical feedback on our developing skills. All of these things, these ways of racing and training were new to me and FUN.

“Everyone is wearing expensive underwear” is a quote from my coach, Dani. She sends me this to remind me that the things we choose to occupy our time with, like riding our bikes, is a very silly little thing. We ride these ridiculously expensive bikes over roots and rocks. We hoot and holler through wildflower forests. We obsess over “nutrition”, which is code for “drinks that are WAY worse for you than soda” and spend hours and hours spinning our legs in circles. There are things that are actually important and hard in the world. At the end of the day, biking is just there to make us better humans and to tackle those problems with grit and grace. It’s easy to take all forms of cycling a bit too seriously so this experience was humbling and perfect in reminding me of the joys that come through it. I was so thankful for my mini cross season, riding around in crop tops learning new things :)

-Zoe Zwecker