CODY SHIMIZU

A look into my life, a journal to look back on, a blog for others to see.

Coming into this cyclocross season, I was quite confident of the form I was in especially after a solid provincials race. Coming in I was really hoping to perform at nationals, so this season was going to be about how good I do at these local races to see where I would be at nationals.

The first weekend in Okotokes for me was about trying to move up from expert to the open category, fortunately I got a win on the first day at Natural CX High, which was a hard muddy race and a hard fought battle between me, Sam, and Christian. The second day was a completely different race, where there was no technical and all flats with high winds. This made for a difficult race for me where, it used roadie tactics of drafting. For me, I had ended up going for a solo breakaway which by got caught by the second last lap, in the end I lost in the spring with Christian and ended up 3rd, but for me fortunately that was enough to move up to the open category.

After, it was hard to adjust to the longer races of the open races, I was lingering around 10th place for the next 4 races in the Redcross, School of Cross, Pumphouse Cross, and Drie Zussen Superprestige CX. The big turning point of the season for me was at the Jim Horner Grand Prix race where everything clicked into its place, from the first lap I was keeping up with Shawn Bunnin…SHAWN BUNNIN!!! Although it did not seem as though he was trying to drop me because of the windy nature of this course, it was great because I could see we were creating a sizeable gap on the others, but by the second last lap when he had dropped me the gap started getting smaller rapidly, but fortunately it was enough to hold onto second place!

It was quite smooth sailing from that weekend where I managed to podium at open races 2 more times, which was a great confidence boost going into nationals!

This year I was super nervous going into nationals because I knew I had a chance at not only podium, but having the opportunity to go to worlds, the course was a super fun, and hard course, the day before the race the sky had dumped a whole bunch of rain on us which made the course conditions next day hard to predict. On the day of the race, fortunately I had a front row call up from last years result, but it was at that moment which I had felt the wall of national level competition, as I had struggled to keep up with the leaders from the start of the race, after a lap or two and we had settled into the race it was the Alberta bunch in 6,7, and 8th position, it was a hard race, but a fun race with all sorts of featured that I rarely had a chance to race with in Alberta. In the end I ended up in 8th place, a little disappointed in the end, but this gave me a good goal to work towards for next year, U23!