Fabian’s 2015 Year in Review
Words: Fabian Merino (IG: @justchilean )
Images: Thanks to Nick Kupiak (IG: @ridegradient), Patrick Burnham (IG: @palleus), Duane Martindale (http://www.duanebc.com/), and Morgan Turner (flickr.com/people/collective_light/)
Thankfully we had another good, sort of warm start of the year with the mild winter in Victoria. After completing the Festive 500 at the end of 2014 I was feeling pretty confident with the beginning of my training for road season as a Cat 3, having new goals and looking forward to traveling to different races outside of the island and BC.
After training for January and February and fighting my wrist that decided to get tendonitis, the first local race happened at Caleb Pike, and my calendar was quite busy starting from there.
I had a few local races before I headed to Enumclaw, WA for the Mutual of Enumclaw stage race, giving me my first opportunity to collect points to move up categories. Brian Hendry and I planned it out and went for it.
Unfortunately Cycling BC wouldn’t let Brian stay in Cat 3 after missing a year of racing so he had to start the year as a Cat 4, separating us into different Cat’s for the weekend.
We both had a great weekend, Brian finished 4th on the road race after staying away in the break. I finished 4th in the Crit and Road Race, should probably try to break the 4th places for next year.
We continued racing the VCL’s as part of training for the next bigger races, next one being the BC Provincials, which was a write off (at least for me).
There were crashes in the last lap of the Crit and the Road Race, thankfully didn’t go down but I was top 10 going into the sprint before kids exploded in front of me.
The weekend after that was the Robert Cameron Law Series, in which I had the road race in mind. For the mixed cat 3/4 field there was a great, hilly 80km course. I had Parker come up to me minutes before staging and telling me he was going to work for me and guess what? It was extremely helpful.
Parker drove the pace up the climb every lap and it was fast enough that the group got real small quick, having a group of about 8 at the front for the last lap.
Definitely the best finish of the year for me, taking the selected sprint at the end of the road race.
I didn’t really have anything planned for racing after that, so Clay and I decided to do something stupid.
The Everesting ride was another big thing for me this year, riding up and down the Observatory 68 times for 19 hours starting at 5:45am and finishing up at 1am the next day. Yeah, it was dumb.
Changing my gear ratio to a 53/39 – 11/28 a few days prior was very helpful to get my kneecaps sore for the next week. After completing it in the dark the champagne started to flow (sort of) between everyone that was there to help and stayed until the end.
I kept racing locally after that. Having people come up to me and asking me why I would do such stupid ride, my response was simply “I don’t know”.
Next up was my cyclocross season, that came in really quick after riding road.
The Cross On The Rock series was in my head as soon as I got my hands on that rad black and red Focus, making me a little confused on why the breaks were so god damn good.
I raced expert and it was definitely harder for my second year riding a cross bike, but I finished top 10 overall which is exactly what I wanted to achieve for the season.
[Above: Coal Cross in Cumberland. Below: GP Topaz Park, Victoira & Bear crossing, Bear Mountain]
The Single Speed Cyclocross World Championships came up very quick… Sorry that’s all I can say about it because I don’t remember any of it.
[Above: Friday’s Welcome Ride. Below: Championships level racing on Sunday]
Most of all of us ended our year with the cross race at Mary’s Farm. It was the best course of the year, weather so good that got people hucking themselves in the pond mid race. Parker and Raph had a great battle and I believe everyone had a blast.
Thanks to everyone who helped me out this year, it was a good one and 2016 will be even better with me being in Chile for 2 months!