I've been slowly getting into cycling over the past few years, and recently I've become quite enthusiastic, especially since I started my first racing season this January. As a result, I think it's time to chronicling my experiences with cycling.
First, a little about me: my name is Jane Wolcott, I live in Menlo Park, CA, and I work as a QA engineer at Fortify Software. I graduated from MIT last June with a Bachelor of Science in Math with Computer Science, then moved here to California with my boyfriend Jose Soltren last September.
Second, I'll say a bit about how I got into cycling. First off, I've always been an athlete, ever since I was very little. My first sport was running, which I loved until I was 15, when I figured out that although it's fun, I'm not very good at it. I also got a little burned out. Other sports that I did while running included soccer (about 8 years), swimming (about 6 summers) and Taekwondo (3 years?). Although I learned to ride a bike when I was a kid, I barely touched one until later on. When I got to MIT, I decided against continuing to run (though I seriously considered the Cross Country team), and ended up walking onto the Women's Openweight Crew Team. During my whole time at MIT, crew was my sport, through fall, winter, and spring. But in the spring of my freshman year, I met Jose, and he was in the process of helping to plan a cross-county bicycle trip with a nonprofit called Bike and Build. We started dating, and it made me think a little about biking, and I was inspired to start riding. I spent that summer at home, and my Dad (who is also a cyclist) got me set up on his old steel Fuji road bike. So in addition to being on the swim team that summer, I also rode at least 1100 miles and had a blast. Of course I went right back to crew in the fall, so I wasn't a cyclist at heart yet. Then, in the summer of 2008, Jose did Bike and Build again, and this time I did too. We biked from Boston to Santa Barbara, and it was an awesome ride, the cycling was amazing. Being able to ride my bike all day was very liberating, and I got in awesome shape for crew in the fall, in addition to getting some crazy tan lines. Then, after graduating MIT, I was without a sport, since I realized that although I loved being on the crew team at MIT, I didn't really want to continue rowing on some other team. So naturally, I turned to cycling. Last summer and fall, I rode my bike on and off, since I was struggling with the lack of structured practices that I had gotten so used to, and because I didn't have a goal to aim for. When I got my job at Fortify, I started commuting to work by bicycle, since it made sense, and I didn't have a car. Now at least I've done a fair amount of base miles, since I ride 11 miles there and 11 miles back every weekday.
So that brings us almost to present day. I did my first practice race, an Early Bird Criterium, in January, and I've been racing since and am completely hooked. As far as sports go, I may even have found "the one", since I love it and it's a sport that you can do your whole life. I'll do a couple more catch-up posts to cover the races that I've done so far, then I'll continue posting as the season progresses. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, I joined the Los Gatos Bicycle Racing Club and will be racing with them this year.
