But then as quickly as the company appeared on our radar, it’s gone. The website is still active but emails are not answered, the sales staff aren’t answering their phones, and the energetic staff doesn’t appear to be so energetic anymore. Hmm, strange that such a successful company that was making money and a name for itself simply closed its doors and shut down. You chalk this up to the current economic situation or even perhaps to bad management.

But what if this company isn’t really dead? Look at the signs – no one answering the phones, emails not being answered – but the website is still live. Strange that if the company has indeed closed its doors that the website is still live… After some investigating by some curious business-watchers, it turns out that to put it quite simply: this company wasn’t prepared.

That’s right – this hot young company who appeared on paper and in person to be doing everything right, neglected to pay attention to one key component of good business: being prepared. Confidence and success convinced the IT manager, the board of directors, and management team that they were doing everything right. But they forgot to consider a couple of key things:

-        What if our servers go down? How will we keep hosting the software that our customers rely on?

-        What if the power goes out? How will we guarantee that our 24/7 support is available?

-        What if employees can’t get into the office due to weather or family emergencies? How will the work get done and the vital sales demos be delivered?

That’s right, this company simply did not consider the things that could go wrong. All too often when business is good and the bank account is growing, no one ever takes the time to think about the “bad stuff”. Unfortunately for this company, this is exactly what happened. Call it over-confidence if you want, but really it comes down to poor management and decision-making. A power outage, a tough winter that featured an ice storm, and unstable servers, all resulted in the company being forced to close its doors.

All it took was three separate incidents that alone perhaps wouldn’t be considered to be serious. But when in one year, this company was threatened three times, it simply became too much. Sales started to drop, productivity was behind, and the board became frustrated – investors pulled out and the company quietly closed its doors.

If only this company had followed advice and initiated Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning. The three incidents would have been just that – incidents. They wouldn’t have turned into threats and eventually forced this company to close. Staff would have been prepared and equipped to work from home, back-up power generators would have been purchased, and the pesky and unstable server software issues would have been addressed. (The only reason the website is still live is because it was hosted off-site…)

What does this mean for you? Well, hopefully you’ll take a hard look at your business – are you equipped and prepared in the event of a threat or disaster? Remember the disaster doesn’t need to be “huge” – it simply needs to be something that causes an interruption in your ability to get the job done. How many of these interruptions can your bottom line sustain? Do you have a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan in place? Perhaps it is time to stop operating by the seat of your pants….

About KingsBridge

KingsBridge offers private businesses and government organizations a unique combination of industry knowledge and cost-effective disaster recovery / business continuity solutions. KingsBridge products and seminars provide the tools to assess possible threats and create tailored plans which mitigate risks and minimize losses in the event of a disruption to business. Kingsbridge is headquartered in Ogdensburg, New York, with offices in Ottawa, Canada and Burlington, Vermont. For more information visit us at www.DisasterRecovery.com.

It is kind of hard to believe that we’re in the last week of July. The summer is whipping by and soon enough it will be fall and time for long-sleeve skinsuits and Dugasts. You know what this means, planning, training, and thinking ahead.

I’ve had a great few weeks of training. My niggling wrist injury is behind me now and the bumps and bruises from my wipe-out on the wet bridge are starting to fade. I’ve been getting out on my ‘cross bike five out of seven days. Sometimes this is for a ‘cross ride on the singletrack and doubletrack trails and other times it is for a focused one hour or 45 minute skills session. I’m seeing some good progress. Getting faster, feeling more smooth, and my confidence is catching up with my fitness.

Last night I was flipping through an old copy of Road magazine (can’t remember the month) but this one features an interview with Tim Johnson and one with Katie Compton. I’ve read these interviews so many times that I kind of overlooked the rest of the issue. Last night, I read an article with the catch phrase “What motivates you?” – wow this is an excellent article. Definitely gave my brain a work-out and forced me to really think about and be honest about what motivates me.

This reading coupled with a great supper-time conversation with Marc about the upcoming season and what I need to do to race where I “want to” had the effect I expected…. I woke up this morning with my brain swirling with excitement and eagerness to get out and ride. To attack the flags and barriers faster, to lean my bike further, to pedal faster, to sprint harder, and to do just do everything I’ve been doing better.

Last year was a great season for me – I realized a big goal and had some break-throughs on the bike. But I still need more. I need to get over my fears of technical descents. I need to not let the course beat me. I need to let go of the brakes. I need to always be pedaling and looking ahead. Only positive thoughts can enter my brain. I need to remember that I have the tools, the skills, and the desire and to put these into use at each and every race and training session. This is the season when I need to see “real” growth – my time to be the racer that I know is inside me.

Yes, this is exciting. And kind of scary. But I’m tired of holding myself back. I need to let myself go – relax on the bike, pedal hard, focus on the course and let the bike do its thing. This year that descent at the Zolder World Cup will not phase me. This year the deep frozen mud ruts will not be an issue – just put my wheels in them and pedal. This year soft and squishy corners will not cause me to overbrake and needlessly slow down.

This year I will attack, attack and attack some more. I’ll attack my fears. I’ll attack the ruts, I’ll conquer the descents, I’ll let my bike float through the corners. I’ll race to my potential and then I’ll raise the bar again. I really don’t have a choice. I’m at the phase in my racing where I have to make these gains to see a difference in my race outcomes. Wattage is important but it doesn’t mean anything without the technical skills and confidence.

This is my season. I can feel it. To steal a few quotes/tattoos from a couple of very inspiring Canadian cyclists:
Svein Tuft: We Will Never Be Here Again (tattooed on his right forearm)
Christian Meier: Last Chance (tattooed on his left forearm)

I’ve been mulling over what words I would get tattooed on my left forearm… My options are:
Go Now
Now or Never
Hard Work Wins
Seize The Day

What about you? What would you get tattooed to keep you driving, striving, and achieving?

Sitting here after my morning ride with the Tour de France broadcast in the background. Listening to Phil and Paul wax poetic about the riders, the mountains, and the thrill of it all. It is easy to become pessimistic about professional bike racing – each week it seems another rider is getting “caught” or another “investigation” is started. I suppose for people not addicted to all things bike, it would appear that professional bike racing is pretty darn corrupt. Everyone is entitled to their opinions (including some less-than-enlightened journalists and commentators)… But what I think is important to recognize is the amount of testing that is done at all levels of professional bike racing. Yes, people are taking drugs. But this is no different from any other professional sport. Ever wonder how professional hockey players (yes, I’m talking the NHL here) manage to maintain their fitness, muscle mass and recover from injuries in mere days that take most people week and sometimes months to recover from? What sets cycling apart is that the athletes are “caught”, the leading officials are not actively turning a blind eye to the situation – hence the perceived “scandals”. Imagine if every other professional sport body introduced even a fraction of the testing that occurs in professional cycling….

Okay, well that was a slightly unexpected rant, but one that has been building for a while. Don’t take my thoughts in the wrong way and think for a second that I condone the doping and drugs. I don’t for a second. But I am tired of people saying that cycling is “dirty”. It isn’t dirty – it is heavily policed which means people get caught.

(Phew, I’m done with this topic now… On to more happy things…)

So on Tuesday night I went to the local training crit. This was a “B” week so it means that the race was not open to the “A” or elite riders in the city. It has been a long time since I’ve raced a B crit, but my coach thought it would be good to go out and get some race intensity into my legs. I was a bit nervous – not sure what the field would be like and how I would feel in the pack. Happy to report that it was a fun night of crit racing. Definitely different from the “A” crit – no real attacks and I was able to comfortably stay in the top 10 of the group the entire time. I was sitting in a good position (third wheel) with two laps to go but then there was a bit of chaos, the pack slowed down, the inevitable swarming occurred and I simply wasn’t comfortably sticking my bike in the little holes that opened. In an A crit I would not have second thoughts about this – but I don’t know all the riders in the B crit or how they will react. So I ended up rolling in somewhere in the top ten (I think) – not the finish I was hoping for but all in all a fun night at the races. Extra bonus was that Marc came out to watch and we rode home together. Excellent training day really: one hour of ‘cross skills in the morning and then I rode to the crit, raced the crit and rode home – made for close to a four hour day.

As for the rest of the week of training? Well today was about tempo intervals and I’ll get out for a little ‘cross skills session in the late afternoon. Other thing I’m doing today and making a habit from here on in – attention to my core strength training. I had been going to yoga three times a week, but going to yoga has been a challenge lately with my latest ulcerative colitis flare, sprained wrist, and recent crash on my ‘cross bike… But today, I’m getting back on track – coach Steve sent out an excellent core and stretching routine that I’ll be making part of my pre-bed ritual. Lots of riding on deck for the weekend – mix of road and ‘cross rides.

In between all this riding, I’ll of course be watching the Tour and cheering on these hard men of the peloton. Can’t imagine descending some of the massive mountains in the crazy rain like the racers did today… As for riding up the mountains? Well, this is a whole other matter entirely… At least in cyclo-cross when the climbs get crazy, we hop off our bikes and run…

So to help clear the air and keep things simple, lets review some of the key terms of our industry – hopefully making it easier for you to discuss Disaster Recovery Planning and Business Continuity Planning with your colleagues.

Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP): refers to the recovery of IT services following a major hit or service interruption.

Business Recovery Planning (BRP): a superset of DRP and refers to the recovery of IT and all other aspects of the business. This includes everything from finance to administration to engineering to manufacturing.

Business Continuity Planning (BCP): includes BRP and highlights vulnerabilities that might cause losses to your business and plans for the continued conduct of your business. These vulnerabilities can include things such as poor security procedures following a disaster or the lack of effective backup procedures.

Emergency Response Planning (ERP): includes all aspects of DRP, BRP, and BCP but adds evacuation planning, medical aid, and security issues.

Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP): refers to the preparations and institutions maintained by the United States government to ensure survival of federal government operations in the case of a catastrophic event.

This is a brief primer of some of the key terminology that is integral to understanding how you need to prepare your business in the event of a disaster. By clearly understanding this basic terminology, you are ready to take the next step and start considering how to best approach protecting your business.

About KingsBridge

KingsBridge offers private businesses and government organizations a unique combination of industry knowledge and cost-effective disaster recovery / business continuity solutions. KingsBridge products and seminars provide the tools to assess possible threats and create tailored plans which mitigate risks and minimize losses in the event of a disruption to business. Kingsbridge is headquartered in Ogdensburg, New York, with offices in Ottawa, Canada and Burlington, Vermont. For more information visit us at www.DisasterRecovery.com.

June 23^rd 2010 is a date that for some will remain an important day, but for most of us, it was just another day. On this day, there was a 5.0 magnitude earthquake in the North East of North America.  If you live in an area that experiences these types of tremors on a regular basis, you’re probably giggling at the near hysterical response that did occur…  If you live in the North East, you experienced a one in 500 year phenomena!

How does this relate to Business Continuity?

Was this an incident?  Yes.

Or was it a disaster?  Hardly.

Ottawa, the largest city in the center of the earthquake, suffered slight damage with some windows breaking and cracks in the foundation of some buildings.  So, this would definitely class itself as an incident, not a disaster.  However, the response from many of the residents and businesses was one of major catastrophe.  Most building evacuated in downtown Ottawa, which is against the established steps of “Stop, drop, hold”:

If you are indoors: “DROP, COVER, HOLD”

▪       Stay inside.

▪       Drop under heavy furniture such as a table, desk, bed or any solid furniture.

▪       Cover your head and torso to prevent being hit by falling objects.

▪       Hold onto the object that you are under so that you remain covered.

How does this impact my Emergency Response Planning (Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery or COOP)?

All incidents are a chance to take and learn lessons – this is no different.

“Should we have an earthquake response in our plan?”  This depends on the likelihood of another one coming.  When you did your Threat Risk Analysis (TRA) you most likely looked at the statistics and considered the likelihood of an earthquake in your region.  In the North East at least, the odds of having another earthquake of similar magnitude is less than 2% and according to Scientist John Adams, of the Geological Survey of Canada the earthquake would have to be at least 10 times stronger before any damage would occur to buildings, thus dropping the likelihood to almost zero.

So, to answer the above question of adding similar incidents to your response plans, if you live somewhere that has regular incidents (snow storms, flooding, wild fires, power failures), then yes add these to your response plan.  If such occurrences are a one in 500 year incident, survive it, learn from it and be better prepared to ensure it remains an incident and doesn’t turn into a disaster.

About KingsBridge

KingsBridge offers private businesses and government organizations a unique combination of industry knowledge and cost-effective disaster recovery / business continuity solutions. KingsBridge products and seminars provide the tools to assess possible threats and create tailored plans which mitigate risks and minimize losses in the event of a disruption to business. Kingsbridge is headquartered in Ogdensburg, New York, with offices in Ottawa, Canada and Burlington, Vermont. For more information visit us at www.DisasterRecovery.com.

Yes, okay, I’m ripping my blog title off of Mark Cavendish’s book Boy Racer… Sorry, sometime a girl has to dig deep to find a title and as I have an affinity for Mr. Cavendish’s book, I thought I’d honor him with my title. If the Manx Missile is reading this blog, lets hope he posts up in the comments… Come on Mark – we know that you have lots of down time right now – you’re only in the last week of the biggest race in France… Alright, I suppose I can dream that the likes of Mark Cavendish would read this site… Now on to the real meat of this post.

Really all I have to say is: thanks! Thanks for the support. Thanks for the emails. Thanks for the Twitter messages. Thanks for the Facebook messages. Thanks for the blog comments. All of these seemingly small things add up and give me a great feeling. The encouragement, the words of wisdom, the understanding – it keeps me coming back for more and wanting to do my best.

This might sound a bit lame but it is true. I’m in a funny spot as a bike racer – I don’t race with a team. I train primarily alone. I really have only myself to look to for motivation when things are feeling a bit tough. But thanks to your constant support, I know that there are people out there who are very similar to my teammates – encouraging me when I need it, giving me a kick in the butt when I need it, and simply just being a presence through the good and the bad.

Speaking of good – I had a fantastic weekend of training. Saturday saw me up bright and early and out the door by 6 a.m. so I could get my intervals in and ride to the Gatineau Park to hook up with Skip so we could ride out to watch the OBC Grand Prix. It was an excellent morning of riding, chatting, handing up bottles, catching up with friends, cheering on Marc and the Scott Boys, watching the Stevens girls rip up the field, and seeing young Timothy cross the line with a big grin on his face. All in all a great day to be a bike racer in Ottawa. Sunday was equally fine. Marc and Shaun convinced me to come out on the Scott team ride. I was a bit hesitant as I didn’t want to slow them down – but luckily they all had six laps of the Gatineau Park in their legs! What a great ride – my first time doing the MacGregor Lake loop. Thoroughly enjoyed it. The conversation was good, the pace was perfect (just enough to push me out of my comfort zone) and the time whipped by. Thanks guys for a great ride!

So an excellent weekend of riding, friends, cheering and simply having fun on bikes. Life really doesn’t get any sweeter.

Looking forward to the ‘cross season starting. My race schedule is looking pretty good with lots of variety of races in it and of course with the big one in January in St. Wendel, Germany.

Now, I best be off and go finish Mr. Cavendish’s book. It is a great read. In fact I channeled my inner-Manx Missile on Sunday during the ride with Scott Boys. I thought about what Mark goes through to make it through the mountains so he can unleash his sprint at the end… This actually did help me focus on the wheel in front of me and to get up and over some of the hills on Sunday. So thanks Mark – you are doing for me what I hope I’m doing for others!

I know it’s not a very ‘cross-focused title, but sometimes it is challenging to come up with a catchy title. I should be thinking of the search engines when creating my titles (so say the search engine optimization folks) but sometimes I just need to let my fingers do the talking. Okay, enough about the title, lets get onto the argy-bargey (thanks Phil, Paul and the cool dudes at the Velocast for this fine word)….

First off – big news – I have update my sponsors page. I’m honored to be supported by such a fine group of companies. Without their support, this sweet life I lead racing my cyclo-cross bike all over North American and Europe simply wouldn’t be possible. So click on over to the sponsor page to read about these great companies. Just to make it easy for you, I proudly present my sponsors for the 2010 – 2011 cyclo-cross season:
-KingsBridge Disaster Recovery: the leader in business continuity and disaster recovery planning software.
- The Cyclery: this Ottawa bike store has all your cycling needs covered and the friendliest mechanics in town.
- Stevens Bikes: the fastest cyclo-cross bikes around. Just ask the current Women’s World Champion.
- Outdoor Gear Company: dealers of fine Giro helmets and sweet Mavic shoes and wheels.
- Clif Bar: tasty Shot Bloks, Clif Bars, and Luna bars. You’ll never go hungry with Clif in you jersey pocket.
- Champion Systems: custom sublimated clothing for an affordable price – now there is no excuse for bad kit.
- Bell Lap Coaching: coach Steve has the skills, the knowledge and the dedication to take you to the next level.
- Oakley: Jawbone, Radar, Full Metal Jacket, Enduring… Plus smooth t’s, luggage, caps. Be fast and look good.

In keeping with the updates theme, I’ve also updated my 2010 – 2011 race calendar. I still need to fill out the racing while I’m in Belgium, but I’ve got the World Cup and elite women’s races listed. Like the past three seasons, I’ll be racing with the junior boys when there isn’t a women’s race on the calendar. Anyway, click on over so you can see where I’ll be out having fun and chasing my cyclo-cross dreams this season.

Have to say it is full-on cyclo-cross mode around here these days. Recovery rides are spent in the woods riding my trusty Stevens bike. The trick is of course on these recovery days to keep the legs from getting to excited… To do this, I focus on small things such as: eyes up at all times, constantly pedaling, riding with my hands on the tops rather than the hoods (to curb the over-braking tendencies), to only use the rear brake, and to focus on a high/smooth cadence. By doing this I’m able to maximize my time on the ‘cross bike – even though I’m not ripping around at top speed, I’m still training my body and mind with some crucial skills that come race day, will be second nature.

Today, though was not a recovery day… Nope it was all about that crucial first “45″. The start is perhaps one of the most important sections of the race. A solid start can help you get into a hard-charging group and often can help you avoid the “first corner” pile-ups that happen as the course narrows from the start/finish straight to the hole shot. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may remember that I have not had a good history with my starts. I’ve had trouble getting amped up for the start and for really putting all my energies into blasting off the line. Well, this is all history for me now. I’ve been working all summer on short intense sprints, my mental attitude to the starts, and really I’ve recognized that if I want to be in the race – I need to start better. So today I drilled myself into the ground with five 45 second start intervals. This may not sound like much but when each of those intervals is done at full gas, five is plenty. I like the numbers I’m seeing. I like the explosion I’m getting in my legs. I’m learning how to use the entire bike to propel me forward. I can tell already that my starts are going to be better this year. Great way to be feeling on this mid-July afternoon.

The rest of the training week is full of tempo intervals and lots of time in the saddle. Nothing like the Sunday long ride to put a smile on my face. I’ll also get out on my ‘cross bike each afternoon for a skill session. Focus will be on barriers, dismounts, mounts (flat and uphill) and uphill/downhill turning.

I’m really looking forward to getting back to Belgium. I wish I could be out riding at Averbode and Kasterlee this weekend! Not to mention hanging out with the ‘cross gang before and after the races. Soon enough though I’ll be back in Blauberg for a winter of racing, training, and soaking up life.

In a word: Yes. Really, you don’t have a choice but to devote budget to business continuity planning.

Admittedly, plans do not come free – but the costs to your business will be much better than the money spent to put a business continuity plan in place.

Why You Need a Plan

• 93% of companies that experience a disaster without a recovery plan close within 5 years. Why? Cash flow. Your insurance will keep you running through your business day, but once the money runs out you better know who your customers are going to be. Without a plan, you have lost your contact list, so you don’t know who owes you money, who is close to signing deals, and whom you’re targeting for future deals. In short, your cash flow has dried up and you have nowhere to turn!

• 50% of companies that lose their critical business systems for more than 10 days never recover. This comes down to brand loyalty. The brand loyalty that we saw a generation ago simply isn’t a constant in today’s business world. If you aren’t open for business, your customers will find someone else. This is the Internet age – it isn’t hard for your customers to find your competitors and quickly and seamlessly give them your business. Are you willing to take that chance with your customers?

• Almost 60% of businesses consider customer services and competitive advantage to be the factors most critical to their company’s survival. With so much advertising and market saturation, it is very expensive to win a new customer to your solution; it is much cheaper to keep your existing customers happy. If you aren’t open for business, or have limited services with no warning, your customers are going to find another solution. We have become an “instant generation”; if you can’t supply a service or product instantly, your customers will find someone else who can.

• For every eight hours of down time, you lose one half of a percentage point of market share (0.5%), and it takes three years to win that market share back! Without a business continuity plan, you won’t have three years…

Convinced? Good, now lets move onto what you need to consider when building your business continuity plan.

Building a Business Continuity Plan

• What is your Recovery Time Objective (RTO)? By what time must you recover?  Your RTO determines how much time you have to get everything back up and running. This helps you determine the amount of resources you need to allocate when planning your recovery budget. For many small businesses, it is very important to be the first back in business. This means that, when there is an area-wide disaster, such as a snowstorm or flooding, you need a plan that gets you back in business before your competitors. This shows your clients that you take their needs seriously and are ready to go the extra step to keep them happy. Time is money for you and your clients.

• You have to determine which services are key to your success and how much you will lose (customers, prospects and money) if you don’t have those services available. The services that are crucial to your success have to be back in operation first, but be careful – sometimes the crucial operations aren’t the most obvious ones.

• You have to be prepared to have people go home and wait by the phone.  Although they are not generating revenue for you (or helping in the recovery) you know where they are, they’re available when needed and they’re not distracting your core recovery.

While these three factors might seem obvious, when disaster does strike, you will be so swamped with decisions to make that you probably won’t even be able to remember your home phone number.

The Dollars and Sense

We recently worked with a small development company that experiences frequent power outages. They had backup batteries but did not have a generator. Fifty people, most of their staff, cannot continue to work without power. We calculated how much direct salary money they were losing with the power outages. The total cost was $125,000 per year!  And that didn’t even include employee benefits, lost sales, and lost profits. This company now has generators and sound business continuity plan to keep them in business when power outages occur.

To calculate a gross dollar-value for how much a disaster could cost you use the KingsBridge Return On Investment (ROI) calculator. The result is the lost revenue per hour. (Yes that’s a pretty big number…)

KingsBridge develops plans that are cost-effective (the savings in insurance premiums often are enough to pay for the plan) and that are a differentiator for you and your competitors. If you can guarantee to your customers that you will be open for business, regardless of the local situation, they are more likely to remain as your customers, more likely to tell others and it is most likely that you will pick up customers when others are facing a disruption of some sort.

Your customers aren’t going to wait for you to return to operations (while their deadlines expire) – they are going to look for a solution that allows them to remain competitive and operating at full capacity. You expect the same from your suppliers, so why should your customers expect less?

Ensure your market share continues to grow, keep your customers happy, keep your investors happy and keep your doors open – put a business continuity plan in place. You really can’t afford not to.

About KingsBridge

KingsBridge offers private businesses and government organizations a unique combination of industry knowledge and cost-effective disaster recovery / business continuity solutions. KingsBridge products and seminars provide the tools to assess possible threats and create tailored plans which mitigate risks and minimize losses in the event of a disruption to business. Kingsbridge is headquartered in Ogdensburg, New York, with offices in Ottawa, Canada and Burlington, Vermont. For more information visit us at www.DisasterRecovery.com.

It is mid-July and I’m starting to feel the rewards of the long hours and efforts in my legs, lungs, heart, and soul. The early summer months were spent doing more riding than I’ve ever done before – lots of long rides, lots of intensity, lots of time with just me, my bike, and my iPod. Focus was on cadence – getting my legs ticking over at a speedy rate, spending lots of time in my tempo zone building and pushing forward, lots of long steady rides that built up physical and mental endurance.

Now it is time to switch gears a bit and focus on race preparation. This means I’m still doing long rides but the intensity has been notched up and changed focus a bit. Cyclo-cross is all about accelerating, maintaining speed, and keeping this speed for the 40 minutes of technical and flowy riding. Throw in some barriers, stairs, sand, mud, tricky descents and you have one of the best ways to spend time on a bike. To get ready for this assault on the senses, I’m working on start intervals, accelerations, threshold work, long rides, and technical skill rides. I’ll start doing some criteriums and road races to get some race intensity into my legs and to continue to build up my mental confidence.

This is a great place to be. The summer so far has had its share and ups and downs with some injuries and health issues. But I’m not letting this get me down. As I’ve written before – “everyone has something”. I have learned to handle my “something” and not let it beat me. I’ve also learned that rest, recovery, sleep and proper nutrition are extremely important. It really doesn’t matter if you do the training if you don’t let your body recover and fuel it sufficiently. I’d have to say that so far this season of training has been a massive success – I’ve learned so much about what I can handle physically and mentally. I feel like a different athlete.

Everything is coming together off the bike as well. I’m pretty happy to announce my sponsors for the upcoming cyclo-cross season. Without the support of these companies, I really wouldn’t be able to chase my cyclo-cross goals and live the dream. Thanks to the following outstanding companies for their support:
KingsBridge Disaster Recovery
Stevens Bikes
The Cyclery
Outdoor Gear Canada
Clif Bar
Bell Lap Coaching
Oakley

Today the training schedule called for 60 minutes of recovery. So like any other eager cyclo-cross racer, I rolled over to my local park with my barrier and flags. Nothing like playing in the park on a Friday morning to put a smile on my face. This little park is a decent place to work on skills – it has a slight incline/hill for setting up the flags and thanks to the soccer field there is room along the side to set up my barrier.

The focus of this session was “back to basics”. Really break down the dismount and mount technique and focus on fully turning the front wheel while traversing the flags. I also gave myself mental cues to focus on keeping my eyes up and maintaining steady pedal pressure going into, during and out of the turns. “Keep pedaling” and “Eyes up” were ever constant in my brain.

I started the session with a “riding the lines” drill. Basically I ride the white lines on the soccer field and focus on making fast turns at line intersections – all the while remembering to look up, to keep steady pedal pressure and to play around with how far I can push the tires, bike lean, and body lean. After this it is time for dismounts and mounts. To warm-up I don’t use the barrier – rather I cruise along the field slowly and focus simply on dismounting properly and then focusing on a smooth mount – there is no running, no lifting of the bike, or heavy breathing.

I find doing these warm-up drills get my body and brain focused on the motions of cyclo-cross and really gets me ready for the faster paced barriers and tighter turning drills. Next it was time for dismount and mount practice with the barrier. I start these drills at a slow pace, gradually building to a faster speed – if I find myself making sloppy mistakes (such as missing the pedal, stutter stepping, etc.), I slow down again and focus on clean smooth technique. One of my goals today was to focus on getting back on the bike quickly, I have a tendency to take to many steps after the barrier.

Next up was turning – thanks to the little slope, I was able to set up my flags to allow me to practice turning uphill and downhill. This works a number of skills at once – keeping the eyes up, constant pedal pressure, really using the upper body to turn the bike, fully turning the front wheel, getting used to letting the bike “fall” down the hill, using only the back brake, and also working on braking, pedaling and turning all together.

Final phase of the session was connecting the barrier and the flags. Ride through the flags up the slope, turn and descend through the flags, thenattack the barrier, pedal a bit, turn around and attack the barrier again, and then back to the flags. I just keep repeating this little drill – I get two barrier sessions and lots of turning in with each “repeat”.

To cool down, back to the soccer field – riding the lines and some slow and easy dismounts and mounts.

There you have it! This is how I spent my morning training session. Because today is a recovery day, I did not do any of these drills at full speed – rather I focused on technique and being smooth. The mantra of “go slow to go fast” definitely holds true when working on cyclo-cross skills.

This morning I was riding the Stevens Super Prestige I raced on at the World Cyclo-Cross Championships in Tabor, Czech Republic. This message on my stem brought back some excellent feelings: