We’re at the close of a big ass year, and we wanna share it.
Highlights
A Growing Roster
We seduced two more racers, Jason Prudhom and Mike Wold, to join us, so we’re now six strong. I think we’re still mostly a road racing team, but Jason’s tendency to do nonsense like DaMN (fixed 
) and Brian being so good at cyclocross is starting to feel contagious, cause we’re spending more time off paved roads than past years.
A Growing Opposing Roster, Too
We couldn’t give a proper highlight reel for 2024 without a shout out to our Gray Duck Racing buddies. You probably know them from promoting ~half the races on the calendar this year, for which we’re extremely grateful, and for being the formerly most prominent fowl-based team in Minnesota. We chat with and ride with this crew all the time, and a group like this is really just everything 
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Joy Memorial Crit
We did not know the first thing about hosting a bike race, but we managed to pull together our first with the Joy Memorial Crit (check out those posts for more, part 1 and part 2). One of this crew’s primary goals is to promote local racing, so I’m really happy we made this happen. And we’re already half way to next year’s edition.
In the spirit of promoting local racing, I want next year’s event to include an element specifically targeted at increasing participation. My anectodal evidence suggests crit turnout is lower than in the past in part due to not feeling comfortable in a field like that. And not to put too fine a point on it, but fear of crashing. It’s understandable.
So on that, I think there are two things we can aim to address: safety and increased comfort. For safety, the greatest quality Joy Memorial specifically has to offer might be the course itself. It’s flat, 4 corners (kind of? 3 and a long curve?), and wide enough to drive two of the toughest biggest boy lifted trucks you’ve ever seen side-by-side at all points.
On fostering comfort, we can do something more tangible. The idea currently clanging around my head is to offer a field that reduces the speed and removes the clip-in anxiety (find pedals and sprint on whistle can be harrowing). Say there’s a 20 minute race, rolling start, and for the first 10 minutes the pack will not exceed 19mph/30kph (because that feels like a speed most everyone will be comfy with from group rides). For the next 5 minutes we’ll go up to 22mph/35kph, and for the final 5 minutes there’s no speed restrictions, but there’s also no prizes, so keep it in check. Racers can get a feel for fast corners and how those around them move. Just an idea so far, nothing concrete, goosed DMs are open if you wanna share thoughts, (so are my personal ones and the comments a the bottom of this page, if you’d rather).
New Moniker
Most the folks know us as Beyond Category Coaching, or BCC, and we’re thrilled to continue representing BCC, but we’re now officially flying as “Goosed Cycling”, still powered by BCC (you might have guessed, given the title of the blog you’re reading). So BCC still keeps our training on track (yours truly is entering my 7th season with them now), and we’re very thankful for the continued support.
WI CX Road Trip
We’re a close team, but since we haven’t yet figured out how to get paid to ride bikes full time, life does make it tricky to all show up at the same races at the same time. And that’s very much more true for destination races (which I’ll call anything requiring an overnight stay). So it’s rather awesome that we were able to coordinate four of us making a trip to Wisconsin for a weekend of the WI CX Series. We left Saint Paul at 4am 
and arrived in Cambridge, WI in time for the 10:30am race, tired but wired. We all raced two fields each day, and outta those 16 races managed 7 podiums and 2 mandatory upgrades to cat3 
.
It was overall an incredible experience, looking forward to more of this next year. Everyone we met was awesome, thanks for having us 
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Results
I felt like I couldn’t lead with results, cause that seemed a little too self-important and there are bigger things than winning (
), but really we’re pretty jazzed with all the racing we did this year, as well as the hardware we took home.
A point of clarification, is gravel road cycling? Are crits? In this newsletter they both are, idk 
.
For the road season, we ventured as far as Wisconsin and Iowa, and hit darn near every race within that range. Here’s some team grand totals.
| Total Road Races | Top 10s |  |
 |
 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
97 
|
45 | 2 | 6 | 7 |
When crit season ended we walked around lost and confused for a week or two, but cross saved us soon enough. We showed up to that with about the same kind of metamucil-esque regularity we brought to the road season.
| Total CX Races | Top 10s | |
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 70 | 37 | 4 | 5 | 5 |
In all that’s 6 people pinning a number and lining up 
167 times from April through November. Hells yes. Shout out to our significant others who we know love nothing more than watching us dick around for hours in 90 degree weather trying to win a 6-pack of Sprecher’s 
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Looking to Next Year
So what’s on tap for 2025? Probably a lot more of the same, but with some extras. I don’t want to call my shots too specifically, because it depends on things , but like I said at the start, I’m personally getting curious about races that aren’t crits, because I hear those can be fun, too (but still also definitely crits).
Also very looking forward to putting on another stellar edition of the Joy Memorial Crit, hopefully we’ll improve a bit every year. Tell ya what, as a thank you for sticking through this newsletter to the end, the first person to DM us on Insta and mention this page gets a free entry to Joy 
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