By Brenda Moczygemba ToughGirl Cycling Team

The cold weather is well on its way and some of us begin to wonder, “What am I going to do now?” Cyclocross season will soon taper off, leaving a barren race calendar until spring. However unhappy you may be when the snow flies, I feel the winter season is an important transition in every cyclists' life. It is beneficial to take this time to reflect, recharge, and make time for friends and family that can fall by the wayside when weekends are filled with race travel and training.

First things first, you spent a lot of time this season training, traveling, and racing. Next season, you want to make sure you build and learn from those very experiences. Take a half-hour or so writing down what worked and what didn’t -- what your goals were and if and how you accomplished them. For example, you may have raced your first race at the Yeti Beti Bike Bash. What did you do to prepare? What did you eat before and during the race? Did any of these things help your performance? Did you perform better or worse than you had hoped for? Jot down other race prep lists – like things you packed for a 12- or 24-hour mountain bike race. It may seem silly at first. I always think, I’ll remember to do this differently next year, yet as I prep for a race weekend months down the road I find myself racking my brain, “What was that thing I needed to remember to do?” By having lists of what worked and what didn’t over the 2011 season, you can build on your strengths and train your weaknesses as you head into the 2012 season.

Next, reflecting on how you felt and performed this past season, make goals and a set down a generic schedule for next season. That doesn’t mean you jump straight into interval training, but having some goals and a handful of Spring and Summer 2012 races in the back of your mind will help keep you on track and motivated when the snow is blowing sideways and the holiday celebrations have taken the place of race weekends. From your rough schedule, you can start to count backwards to know when to start logging base miles, when to transition back into intervals, and how to reach your goals. The key here is not only to setting goals but to setting yourself up to meet those goals.

The Boulder Mountain Bike Alliance president, Jason Vogel, spells it all out in his recent letter titled A HISTORY OF SUCCESS AND PROGRESS: LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT. In the letter Jason talks about the successful relationship and brand BMA has created with Boulder Openspace and other officials, the opposition they run into and why they keep on fighting what may appear to be the steepest hill to climb.

While the BMA has had some setbacks in the last few years with the failure to create the canal path from Gunbarrel to Lyons, no bikes in West TSA and failure to gain access to Aneome Hill, they have made a lot of progress and anyone who has lived here for 10+ years should agree that options for mountain bikers have increased by a lot. Unlike road cyclist who are getting many of our shoulders and improved roads with little push back the BMA has to be there to make sure officials don't look past that group of cyclists. I hope BMA never gives up the fight and at the same time it saddens me that they have to fight so hard to do something so simple as getting access to public lands for a healthy and relatively environmentally low impact activity. It shouldn't be a struggle, something is wrong with our officials and the mindset of the value of mountain biking in our community. On the flip side road cyclists should be thanking transportation officials at how easy they have made it for us... but imagine how awesome it could be if we had Boulder Road Association (BRA) like BMA!

From the Coloradoan:

A semi-trailer driver who clipped a Fort Collins bicyclist on the sidewalk as he turned a corner and then kept going knocked off a fire hydrant a few blocks away as a driver chased him down.

The cyclist, 28, was waiting to cross at the intersection of LaPorte Avenue and Shields Street shortly before 5 p.m. Friday when the truck driver turned south from LaPorte onto Shields.

"His wheels ended up hitting the bicyclist who was on the sidewalk," police Sgt. Jackie Pearson said. "He didn't realize he had hit her."