New Beginnings

This being my first blog let me begin by introducing myself. My name is Andrew Randell. I recently retired from racing as a professional cyclist, which I had been doing for 11 years. During my career I was lucky to be a part of some of the major cycling projects undertaken in Canadian cycling: Espoirs Laval, Jet Fuel, Symmetrics and most recently SpiderTecah. Now that I am done racing full-time my hope is to give something back to the sport and help some new young guns move up the ranks.

With that in mind I’ve taken on a management role with the Jet Fuel/La Bicicletta team. Jet Fuel was where I got my start as a professional back in 1999, and I always knew that I would work with them again one day. Johnny, the owner of the Jet Fuel coffee shop, always bugged me throughout my career to come back and ride for the team. And since I go there each morning for a coffee there’s been a lot of bike talk and enthusiasm over the years. Now I’ll be obliging him.

A couple of weekends ago we brought everyone together for our first team ride/meeting day. It’s tough finding the time to pull everyone together. Exams started this past week, then everyone is off home for the holidays, and then heading South to start training. Not much time for team building.

That was why I really wanted us to get out on a ride together. My mind-set was that “the team that rides together stays together”. The problem was that although the week was really nice the weekend was forecast to be rainy. Not being a pro anymore I’m soft now and didn’t feel like doing three hours of training in 5C and rain, staying together or not. But watching the hourly forecast it looked like we might be able to squeeze in a few hours of riding before the rain arrived and so the ride was on. You’ve got to love the weather websites: radar, hourly reports, wind, predictive radar! You can almost tailor your day to ride between the raindrops.

Oh, except this time it wasn’t so accurate. The rain was forecast for 10 or 11, and it rolled in heavily at 9, an hour into our ride. Best of all, only three of us had fenders on our bikes. Over the years the three of us who had the fenders (myself, Pete Morse and Joe Giuliano) have developed a reputation as hard asses when it comes to them – no fenders, no ride as I like to say. And here’s why: while it did rain heavily for a bit, it did stop, but not for the group riding together. For the next hour and a bit that it took to get back to the car it kept raining – the spray flying off the wheels in front of us drenched everyone. Not cool, or maybe too cool as we all started to get cold as the spray seeped into our clothes.

Still, it was the first experience for the team riding together. We all shivered by the cars and joked about the ride, a good first bonding session. The guys were all pumped and we talked later in the day about team camps and how to improve the team dynamic. It’s a good group and I’m looking forward to an exciting 2012. Keep an eye here for more updates.

Recently retired from professional cycling, Andrew Randell has taken up a management/rider development role with the Jet Fuel/La Bicicletta team for 2012 and opened up his coaching services to the public. Reach him at arcoaching@gmail.com.