There is a self discovery that becomes very evident as your skills and your health increases when you give cycling some practice. That is – you notice you become faster and it may bring a smile to your face that you can conquer the trail demons that may have worried you before. Roots become more maneagable at speed, cornering requires less braking, climbing slightly less sufferable, and that log-pile less intimidating. There may also come another realization – you have friends or know a group of people who travel in groups in similar ‘kits’ saying their going on a training ride through the woods. They may be considerably faster, perhaps on the same level, but most definitely noticeable, is that they’re having as much fun as you are. You’ll find these similarly spandexed yahoos are most likely on a team. Chicago has spawned a good number of cycling teams – and in most recent years, those teams have an off-road cycling segment or entirely concentrate on only dirt riding. Off-road cycling participation has been growing tremendously thanks to local race opportunities offered by CAMBr and the Chicago Cross Cup.

Why Join a Team
The biggest benefit to joining any team is ‘resources’. Whether those resources are team mates to help you mash out a 24 Hour Race, discounts provided by team sponsors, or a team coach providing guidance on appropriate drills and cycling activities to increase your fitness – each team has different resources. The best team for you is not so cut and dry either. There are many teams, and they are all great in their individual right. You need to find the team that best fits the goals you have for what you want to acheive. You want to slay the trails in the WORS series? Some teams travel to those races regularly. You want to concentrate on endurance MTB series events, some teams focus on those regularly. Only want to do cyclocross, there’s teams that only that too. We will be updating our teams section on our site here in the coming week. The teams we highlight on The Bonebell are teams that have resources that focus on off-road cycling. View their website, see what they have to offer. It could be the best experience you have this year – riding to the trails with a teammate and training for goal.

Speaking of training for goals – don’t forget one goal you should put on the list for 2010 that is beneficial to your fitness – because without it, you’d have nothing to ride on. Trail Building. The Bonebell is going to make a call out to all teams to responds in force this year to participate in Trail Workdays for CAMBr. Stiggity says it best – “The roadies have IDOT to take care of the roads they ride on, the dirtbags only have themselves to take care of the trails in Illinois.” You want to see the sport and recreation of off-road cycling grow? Then participate in your local chapter of trail workdays. More information to come on the calendar and on Facebook event pages from CAMBr and us.