If you’re wondering why the team is called Black Dog Racing, well, it was inspired by my Black Labs. If you happen to be at a race in Ontario, Mid-West, or Eastern US, you might be lucky enough to meet them!
Black Dog Racing is a cycling team primarily focused on Cyclocross, but it all started because a girl simply wanted to race her bike.
It’s hard to find multiple people who started racing cyclocross the same way. Not every community is cycling orientated, and (unlike it is now - for the most part), not every cycling community has cyclocross.
For me, I got into cyclocross as a 12-year-old because I simply wanted to keep racing my bike. The local mountain bike series ended in August and I wanted more. Thankfully, my parents had heard of this racing discipline that happened in the fall on these drop bar bikes with knobby tires through friends, and next thing we knew I was racing cyclocross.
When I started, there was no girls category, and most of my first year I was the only girl racing, so I had to race with the boys. Having my own category didn’t matter then, and it doesn’t matter to me now. Since then, a lot more girls are racing, and all ages and genders have their own categories. Cyclocross has come a long way since then and has made a lot of changes.
I love racing cyclocross now as much as I did then, whether there was a category for girls or not. One thing that never changed along the way was my for racing my bike. I loved racing back then, I love it now, and it will only get better.