Canadian Cycling Magazine Podcast

Did you have a goal in 2020 that fell apart? Maybe an event you wanted to do well at? Maybe it was a riding-related goal that went out the window when you had to self-isolate or start managing your kid’s online classes.

While there are reasons to have a bit of optimism for 2021, planning for the year ahead is still tricky. If you set a goal race, will it actually run, for example? Given the high probability that you’ll face some more curveballs next year, how do you plan to get better and fitter on the bike?

Molly Hurford is a contributor to the magazine and the podcast. She has a great story in the current issue, and now online, about why you should ditch traditional training goals or resolutions for 2021. She proposes setting intentions for what she calls #theseUncertainTimes.

Molly and her partner Peter Glassford host the Consummate Athlete podcast and have a new book called Becoming a Consummate Athlete. Some of the discussion in this episode picks up on ideas from that book. Some other things that came up are cross country rider Haley Smith’s 2018 bronze medal ride at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, bathtub crayons, Marie Kondo and cycling gear, and the book Forever Fit by pop legend Cher. But most important, there’s lots of great training advice for the year ahead.

Was the 2020 road season Michael Woods's best season to date?  That's something debated here at Canadian Cycling Magazine so it's an idea editor Matthew Pioro wanted to explore with Woods himself.

Despite breaking his leg in March, Woods had some great results when racing resumed in August. There was his stage win and two days in the leader's jersey at Tirreno-Adriatico, a stage win at the Vuelta a España and even a win at a virtual race. Woods and Pioro get into comparisons with his 2018 season, which was the previous high-water mark for the Ottawa rider.

There's also discussion of Woods’s evolving relationship with Alejandro Valverde, his new team for 2021, Israel Start-Up Nation and all the people who will be familiar to him at that outfit. And there’s his busted-leg buddy who’s quite an accomplished cyclist.

The interview took place in mid-November. Woods was at home recovering from an operation that saw the removal of four screws from his leg. Remember, he broke his femur badly at Paris-Nice. How badly? It was so bad, that he was seriously considering ending his cycling career. But it's good he didn't. Instead, he had a road season that right now really could be his best ever.

Recently, Ryan Anderson announced his retirement from pro cycling. He’s been at it since 2008. In that time, he might not have risen to the same heights as say his frequent teammate Svein Tuft or some of his contemporaries, such as David Veilleux or Hugo Houle. But Anderson is the last of a certain generation of pro road cyclist. He’s been on all the influential Canadian road outfits of the past 15 years including Symmetrics, SpiderTech and Rally Cycling. Technically, Rally is registered in Minneapolis, but there’s always so many Canadians on that team, both on the racing side and on the management side, that it gets honorary citizenship.

Anderson got his start daydreaming his way through mountain bike races in his home province of Alberta. Then he moved to banging bars on the road. Later he worked as hard as he could to get to Europe to race against the sport’s best.

He’s seen a lot during the past 13 years. Teams and races have come and gone. As Anderson takes his leave from racing, he looks back at people and events that shaped him and that continue to shape road cycling today.

Maghalie Rochette, the Canadian and Pan Am cyclocross champion, has been in Europe for more than a month racing. In the past two weeks, things have gotten tougher for her. Cases of Covid-19 are growing in Europe. Countries have entered lockdowns. Some races are getting cancelled. But, oddly, others are forging ahead.

On the Monday following Koppenberg Cross, which Rochette had raced, she was in her camper van that carries her entire support crew: David Gagnon, Rochette’s partner, coach, mechanic and it’s probably fair to say general manager of Team Rochette, and their dog Mia. It’s a small, nimble operation, but they are wrestling with some big questions. They had come to Europe to race for months, which is a challenge for North American riders in the best of times. Now they are wondering how safe it will be for them if they continue on. What if one of them should fall ill? How long will the racing continue? From a distance, it might be easy to say, “Well, if you don’t feel comfortable, you should just leave Europe.” But, cyclocross is Rochette’s job. Now, there’s not enough high-level racing on this side of the globe. If racing continues in Europe, and if she doesn’t participate, it will have a negative effect on the next season. Rochette gets into these and other dilemmas.

Rochette also talks about racing at the mountain bike world championships in early October, her creative projects and even board games.

In June, Michael Barry discussed the UCI’s plan for a compressed 2020 road season. Recently, Canadian Cycling Magazine editor Matthew Pioro wanted to look back at some of Barry’s predictions from late spring. There is something unfair about looking back at predictions. In the best of times, guesses about the future are usually wrong. During this pandemic, it’s extremely hard to find any certainty. But, Pioro thought the review would be useful. You don’t know the significance of moves in a race until the race is over. So we wouldn’t fully understand the season until the end. We’re close to the end now, so let’s see what we’ve learned.

Michael Barry did get a pretty significant prediction totally wrong. And you're probably glad he did.

This past summer, Tim Johnson went on his first bikepacking trip. As trips go, this one was big: seven days, roughly 700 km on the Trans-Taiga, which is roughly 1,300 km north of Montreal. Johnson knew Quebec pretty well beforehand. Sure, he’s a six time U.S. cyclocross champion and currently a director of development at USA Cycling. His Strava profile puts him in Topsfield, Mass., but he spends much of the year in Sutton, Que. Remember, he’s married to a member of the Canadian parliament. His wife of almost 16 years is Lyne Bessette. She’s a Canadian cycling champion and the Liberal MP for Brome-Missisquoi. So, yes, Tim Johnson knows Quebec. And as of this past summer, he’s been to a part of the province that few Quebeckers even see.

In his episode, Johnson speaks about bear encounters, riding gravel, bugs, fishing and his new perspectives on his adopted province.

Throughout the Tour, Hugo Houle of Astana Pro team checked in with Canadian Cycling Magazine. Listen to his insights from inside the race. He talks about echelons, spreadsheets and crashes.

Also this month, Michael Woods won a stage at Tirreno-Adriatico and held the leader’s jersey for two days.

Both riders are slated to represent Canada at the road world championships on Sunday. They’ll tell us what we might see on the circuit in Imola, Italy and of their hopes on how the road race might play out for them.

From jerseys won by young Canadians to Euro pros sipping Caesars to taking in a Montreal Canadiens game with a future world champion, the influence of the Grands Prix Cyclistes de Québec et de Montréal is significant. This episode of the Canadian Cycling Magazine Podcast honours those races by looking at moments, both big and small, connected with the Grands Prix. There’s discussion of poutine, too.

This is usually a busy time of year for Catharine Pendrel. She’s usually competing in cross country World Cups or preparing for the world championships or even in full Olympics mode. Her list of wins is long, but here’s a short version: two cross country world championship titles, one in 2011, the other in 2014; winner of the World Cup overall three times, once in 2010 and 2012 and 2016; six national cross country championship titles; two national cyclocross championship titles; three appearances at the Summer Olympics; one bronze medal from Rio in 2016.

Pendrel is a very generous and active supporter of the mountain bike scene in Canada. About two years ago, she and her husband Keith Wilson started Pendrel Racing, a development team for young riders. This past summer, they’ve had an up-and-coming Canadian rider staying at their place and riding in the Kamloops, B.C. area. (Listen to find out who.)

Pendrel also discusses how she reacted after a crash in one of the biggest races of her career and who she thinks will be going strong when this year’s shortened mountain bike World Cup starts in September. She gives some insights into the selection process for mountain bikers for the 2021 Olympics. Pendrel speaks on some advice she had for a rider on her development team on how to ride in this extended off-season that athletes face. That advice could help you, too.

When Rob Britton got into bikepacking, he really went for it. In 2018, the Tour of Utah winner set off from Calgary to Port Renfrew, B.C., on a nine-day adventure. The saddle time seemed to prepare him nicely for spending the day in the breakaway at the world championship road race soon after. Since then, Britton has continued to have some long adventures on his bike, including a big trip to Japan in November 2019 and a gravel epic earlier this year.

In this episode, Britton covers all kinds of topics related to bikepacking. He talks about how he sometimes pushes himself and his friends. He’s very safety conscious, and even has some good advice about when and how to take risks. There’s discussion about gear, including his go-to equipment list. He puts a lot of thought into every gram including what goes in his flask.

After you hear this interview with Rob Britton, you’ll want to plan a big cycling adventure.