The Year In Review

We suppose it’s that time of year, no? Let us reflect on the year, with nary a mention of dead celebrities, political scandal, or sports stars reaffirming that a man is only as faithful as his options, shall we?

For our humble developmental team, the end results are pretty damn good and we’re happy with them. BAR results by OBRA standards are a curious thing as they can be heavily influenced by masters, juniors, and of course, sandbagging. Some teams or folks do well by firstly hard work, some by circumstance or for whatever reason, as do some teams, so the “rankings” are a bit subjective, but we’re happy with how everything shook out.

Of course, we had our horrific luck come to port in the shape of Kristin’s horrible crash, and Kira’s cancer, but as a team we persevered through all that bad luck and turned in some great results in the face of great physical and emotional adversity. By the way, on both fronts our girls are still making massive strides towards full recovery. Amazing as well is that you’ll find both of these women still listed in the overall for various disciplines in Cat 4, considering both their seasons ended abruptly in June, and that’s a testament to their efforts prior to the calamities.

We’re small, and we’re mostly a developmental squad. We keep hearing that we’re a big team, and that’s just not true. We have just under 30 riders both men and women – it’s just that we show up, en masse, a lot. We have very few masters, and no juniors. So to end up 17th on the Team BAR, out of 76 registered teams is a placing we’re happy with. For our Cat 4 women, we’re right up there in almost all categories, same goes for our Cat 4 men and our Cat 3 men as well. In all three of our categories, you’ll find top 3 or top 5 placings mostly. So again, to be 17th with no masters, no juniors, a limited amount of track racing, and no 1’s or 2’s, men or women – speaks volumes.

Big wins at Vancouver Courthouse Crit and Swan Island put us firmly on the map as a good crit team. High placings in Elkhorn and Cherry Blossom marked us as having some climbers in stage races.  Regular attendance at PIR let us hone our team skills and strategies. And with so many good riders and some good teams out there beating up on us, we clearly had our work cut out for us to earn these results.

So it is now that we begin to recharge the batteries from long road and cross seasons. Our team will gather in January to begin team rides, with a training camp to follow in an undisclosed (but fun!) location in February or March, and then we’ll begin our assault on the 2010 road season in earnest. For 2009, it was like any other year in that it was full of ups and downs, but in the end it was a season we as a team can look back on with a great degree of pride. All of it is captured right here in these two pictorial volumes, with almost every race of the schedule featured.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and we’ll be back on the air in a few weeks. Until then, au revoir!