Ryan Bonick

2024 Cyclocross Year in Review

Coming into this year, I had a lot of high hopes. I had managed to pick up some good finishes in 2023, including a podium, and won both the Cyclo-X series and the Colorado Cross Cup for Cat 4. Seemed like a no-brainer that I could keep up this momentum, snag a podium or two, and cat up to cat 3 so I could stop waking up at 6am to go race bikes in the cold.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have as strong a start to the season as I hoped - my handling was definitely lacking and a couple of crashes in my first race led to me not even finishing in the top 50%! I also missed the first few Back to Basics weekday practice races held out in Golden - in part because of transportation issues.

There was one absolutely horrible race I had, the Amy D CX race on the same paths and trails as the Back to Basics races. I always seem to struggle a bit on the loose dirt corners there, and I ended up going down pretty hard about two minutes into the race and got my bike pretty fucked (saddle was about 30 degrees off center). This cascaded into me not feeling comfortable on the corners, which is pretty tough no matter what but especially at that venue, with so much loose dirt. I ended up crashing a second time about 20 minutes into the race, and that one took about 30 seconds to even get back up and moving (after having a long, serious thought about DNFing).

I was pretty consistenly able to finish in the top 10 otherwise though (a task made easier by ever shrinking CX fields, unfortunately) and did some double dipping into the single speed open races.

Life, though, had some other stuff going on. One of my best friends was having a destination wedding in Spain, and my partner & I took advantage of the opportunity to meander around Europe afterwards. So I was off for about 3 weeks, right after my horrible forgettable Amy D race.

I did get to have a snowcross race, the Wild West CX held in Golden at the JeffCo Fairgrounds. That was a blast, or at least the parts where I could sort of try and ride my bike. There was about half of that, with the other half just being completely unrideable terrain that I was running. I don’t much like running! That’s why I bike. Race was brutal, but I had fun.

Coming into the State Champs / the final Cyclo-X race at Longmont, I was hoping to at least snag a podium. Briefly I was up to 3rd, but I ended up losing some spots in the later laps and finished 6th.

Why didn’t I do better? Idk, reader, idk.

I think I def was a bit rusty early in the season, while my buddy who spent the summer racing MTB instead of crits was killing it. That said, I felt like I was at peak fitness coming into the season!

Progress (Last Year’s Goals)

1. Skills

   I most certainly didn’t improve much over the last year, sadly. That said, I’m moderately happy with my handling skills. I think the area that I need the most work on is off-camber riding, especially turns. The hairpin u-turns on off-camber downhills kill me relative to other riders. I’ve learned the hard way to be cautious on them, but I’m probably overly cautious and could carry more speed if I learn how to ride them better.

   I also need to stop fucking crashing by taking turns too tightly and snagging the posts / tape on the inside apex! I crashed several times doing that, including twice in the opening race at CX at the Velodrome (The Hustle).

2. More FTP / Recovery

   I feel like I came into this season a bit stronger than I was at the start of last year, but I don’t think I peaked any higher than last year. Just was at that level a bit earlier in the season.

   This is still going to be a goal for next year, probably with a bit less focus on road racing to give myself more time to accomplish that.

3. Reach Cat 3

   Nope. I picked up a couple more upgrade points and have the upgrade points to voluntarily cat up, but both were 4th place finishes. I want another podium or two before catting up, since I know it’ll be a long uphill fight to do well in the cat 3s. I’ve watched a couple of their races this year, and it’s basically a who’s who of “people who kicked my ass the last couple seasons”.

Goals for Next Year

So where do I want to improve more next year? I’m keeping the same goals!

I don’t think any of these are very special, they’re basically the two things you need to be good at cyclocross + a results goal of doing well and podiuming so that I can level up!

1. Skills

   More off camber practice, and hopefully mountain biking (I need to buy a mountain bike!) a bit more will improve my general handling skills as well.

2. More FTP / Recovery

   I talked with my coach, we’re going to give this a bit more priority relative to being in race shape for the road season. So hard to race CX and then be sharp in 4 months when crits start!

3. Reach Cat 3

   I’m at the point I could voluntarily upgrade, but I want another podium or two before upgrading. This would be great though, since the 4/5 races are so early in the morning…

Stats

Series Podiums: 1 (Cyclo-X Series, 2nd)

Upgrade Points (towards Cat 3): 2 (+8 from last year, if you count the SSCX win out of 5, which I don’t)

Previous Years

Season 1 (2019): Low Cat 5. Avged bottom 20%

Season 2 (2021): Catted up to 4 bc USAC mandatory is 10 races and I didn’t wanna switch mid season. Probably could have stayed in 5 tbh, idk how much they care if you’re not winning. Avged bottom 20%.

Season 3 (2022): Still cat 4. Still… bottom 20%.

Season 3 (2022): Consistently top 50%, a couple of podiums / near-podiums.

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