Watch the World Road Championships
The UCI World Road Championships are running this week in Innsbruck, Austria. You can view highlights and live coverage of some events on the UCI’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ucichannel. Weekend coverage of the Elite Women’s and Men’s road races looks to only be available through a subscription to www.FloBikes.com (though you may find some re-broadcasts of Eurosport out there).
And speaking of World Championships, did you know the UCI has Masters age group road championships each year too? I’ve mentioned it to a few of you already.
The UCI directs the Masters World Championships through the UCI Gran Fondo World Series. To compete in the World Championships you need to achieve a qualifying time in one of the gran fondo world series events during the year prior to the championships.
The exciting news about this is Vancouver’s Whistler Gran Fondo will serve as the 2020 UCI Gran Fondo World Championships!
I’m curious if there’s interest in the club to train specifically over the next two seasons to target the Whistler World Championships.
Besides aiming for the final event in September 2020, you’d need to select at least one World Series Gran Fondo in the 12-months prior to Whistler and achieve your qualifying position (top 25% finish in your 5-year Masters age group).
In recent years, North America has only hosted two qualifying events each year: one in Jacksonville, Alabama, and the other in Blue Mountain, Ontario. But the list of qualifying events for 2020 has not been released, so that could change. (The Penticton Axel Merckx Gran Fondo was a qualifier a few years back, but has not been in recent years.)
Take a look at this coming year’s series of events for ideas. It could be exciting to select an exotic location for your qualifying event. And then the final event is only a (long) day’s drive away. Talk about it with your club mates. Let me and/or the club executive know if you think the club should make this some kind of special project.
Keep Up Your Fall Riding
Throughout the fall, you can keep building your aerobic fitness with as many easy, long rides as the weather and sunlight afford you. Bank the hours now, and you won’t need many (if any) long trainer rides through much of the winter.
Supplement your fall schedule with at least one day of intervals … or ‘cross racing … and you’ll keep most of your fitness through the fall. Your intervals can be short hill repeats, threshold repeats, or some one-minute efforts on your indoor trainer. Any repeated efforts that get you out of your comfort zone.
Weekly Ride Schedule Summary
As long as we have clear roads, above 0° temperatures, and dry skies, then we’ll keep trying to host our weekend rides through the fall. As I said above, use these rides to bank some endurance fitness for the winter.
But our Tuesday ride will now officially drop away. We had a keen group this last Tuesday, but sunset keeps galloping earlier. This next week sunset will be just after 7pm – not enough time for the ride. If you’ve got the time earlier in the day, I encourage you to attack the hill circuit on your own.
Saturday departs from Colchester Elementary at 11am and heads south and east.
The Sunday Ride meets at 11am in the parking lot of The Enjoy Centre with some promising fall colours.
Wednesday offers you the Midweek Cyclocross Race at Goldbar Park. Now starting at 6:30pm.
You are successful the moment you start moving toward a worthwhile goal.