Tides: A Sandy Cycling Ode

What do we do when the direction changes?

When the world turns upside down?

When the dream disappears?

When those best laid plans go awry…

When a global pandemic cast a season into chaos, canceling more than half of the races on the international calendar, pro cyclocross racer and journalist Andrew Juiliano was like most of us. He wondered what he was going to do. What to do with months of preparation and planning? What to do to stay motivated with a dream disappearing. What to do to maintain a purpose? He had questions like all of us do.  

He found his answer in what he knows best. He kept riding. He kept writing.

He took his favorite training session, inspired by the famous sand races in Belgium, like the Koksijde World Cup, and decided to share it with the cyclocross world. Collaborating with cinematographers Jeff Clark and Nick Nelson of Pixel Peak Productions, they captured a typical cyclocross training session. To provide context, and to add a bit of creative flare, Andrew wrote a poem to go along with the footage. It’s that combo, the writing and the riding, that’s helped him process every major challenge in his life.

The beauty of cyclocross can be found it everywhere. Lakefronts. River Washes.  Deserts. Volleyball Courts. Drainage Basins. Local Parks. Races or not, with the right perspective, cyclocross everywhere.

Keeping momentum is not always easy especially when circumstances change. But doing what we know and what we love keeps us moving, gives us purpose, maintains our spirits during these most exceptional of times. 

So what do we do when the world spins wildly out of our control?

We do what we we’ve always done. We control what we can.

We keep rolling. Forward.