Re-cap (English)

 So, this is my blog, but I think of it more as a cycling diary since I’m just writing about my cycling. Anyway, I never got any flow in my writing, but I’ll do another try for the season of 2022. Most likely you haven’t been around this diary and therefor have no clue whatsoever what this is all about, so here is a quick re-cap:

My name is Niclas, I’m Swedish and I work at an office. English is not my native language so be prepared to encounter some grammar failure and really weird Swenglish that can get pretty wrong sometimes :D. I started to ride road bikes in 2017, just to have some fun and get back some of my shape I used to have back in my teens and early twenties. I have always been a sports fan and I’ve followed road cycling closely for about ten years before I tried it myself. In early 2018 I moved to Guatemala and almost immediately ran into a guy who was managing an elite team at the national level. I started racing for his team and the first season I finished at the bottom 25% of the field. I got a real kick out of racing, and I felt proud of myself for even trying and daring to jump into the deep end immediately. I was hooked, so I got myself a better bike. Went from an entry level Bianchi Intrepida to a Giant Propel with carbon wheels. I decided that I wanted to become the best cyclist I possibly could from what I had. I was in my late twenties, so I was 10-15 years behind my competitors in training and experience, so I just focused on myself and my personal improvement as a cyclist. The season of 2019 went better, and I saw big gains in my power and race results and I was more often than not in the top 50% in the races I did. I had changed team for this year and was selected as captain for the UCI 2.2 race Vuelta Guatemala at the end of the season. Sadly I had to go back to Sweden for work. The season of 2020 got cancelled for me and I didn’t race one km but I kept on riding. First half of the 2021 season got ruined because of crashing. At the first stage of the first race of the season I got caught in a peloton crash, I could finish the stage but was DNS the day after for stage 2. A few weeks later I crashed at training after hitting a camouflaged speed bump. I barely remember it. This was the same week as the second race and the week before the third race, I missed out on both due to a shoulder injury. I then went back to Sweden for work and got back to Guatemala in August for the last part of the season. The manager of my team had set up so I would be eligible to race the Vuelta Guatemala. As a foreigner you must start a certain number of races at the elite calendar each season to race Vuelta Guatemala with a Guatemalan team (which I hadn’t). Then the pandemic struck again and all remaining races including Vuelta Guatemala got cancelled.

Now I’m in Sweden, trying to do some proper base training in the depths of the south Scandinavian winter. I will go back to Guatemala the 26^th of January and hopefully participate in four stage races that will take part from February to early April before I go back to Sweden. I will race for the same team as last year and I hope to improve throughout the year. I might even try to race in Sweden this summer. Keep checking in here to get a glimpse how road cycling works in a very mountainous third-world country. I will hopefully be able to show race videos this year as well.

Lining up for stage 1 of Tour por la Paz 2021