Forget years of training. Forget the blood and the tears.
Sweat and road rash... some of each, maybe.
Nevertheless, it was only two years ago that twentysomething Aaron Schooler from Edmonton’s Boonie Doon area decided to switch gears from bike commuter to bike racer. He entered some local races, and success quickly followed.
In his first year of racing, he picked up a second-place finish in the under-23 age category at the National Cyclocross Championships. That same season, in 2006, he also qualified and competed at Cyclocross Worlds in Belgium and finished 25th at the Road Race Nationals.
Cyclocross, Schooler says, is “a mix between road and mountain biking where you use road bikes that can take a beating. The bikes have knobby tires, so they can go over grass. The course is a closed loop of 2.5 to 3 kilometres with some places where you have to jump off your bike, run over barriers, and shoulder your bike to go up stairs.”
Road racing, he says, requires less explanation. “Its going out and racing on the road, sometimes riding for up to six hours” with skinny tires and ultra-light bikes. (Schooler’s road bike weighs in at a measly 16 pounds.)
In the 2007-2008 season, only his second competition year, Schooler continued his success. He placed second at the Alberta Provincial Mountain Bike Championships in the elite category. He finished fourth in the same category at Cyclocross Nationals, and competed in the Worlds Cyclocross circuit, with a 56th-place finish at the Worlds in Treviso, Italy.
For Schooler, riding his bike is as natural as, well, riding a bike. Wherever lofty heights he’s attained, he started the same way we all do: pedaling as a kid, riding his bike to Capilano for school and out to Millwoods to referee soccer games. “My dad got me into it,” he says. “I was always on his wheel.”
His father never entered him into a race, but Schooler remembers a time when he boosted someone else’s cycling career. “When I was maybe six or seven, my cousin came in from B.C. for a bike race. He borrowed one of my dad’s bikes and my dad took him out to the race. I remember seeing my dad have a huge smile on his face. I was jealous”.
Schooler isn’t jealous anymore. Nor does he regret his late start. He sees himself as lucky, having avoided burnout. “I’m glad I didn’t start to race until now,” he says. “I can still enjoy it.... In cycling, like most endurance sports, people peak later. Most don’t get there until they’re 30. So some guys are 30-32 before they’re even thinking about retiring.”
So what made Schooler change gears? It all came down to timing: he had to wait for his schedule to open up. “I had been so busy,” he says, “always going to school, and I was also in army reserves.”
But after he graduated from NAIT and started a full-time job in downtown Edmonton as a mechanical designer, he was finally able to find time to train. “When I got the job,” he says, “it was my first summer in the city. I was able to go to work, then when I was done I’d have time to train and race.”
Consistent training time hasn’t been the only perk to his nine-to-five job; he also has a very supportive boss, who has given him the time off he needed to travel and compete at Worlds and even helped fund his trip to Belgium.
Let’s hope his employer continues to support Schooler’s ambitions, because he doesn’t have plans to park his bike anytime soon. Racing season started two weeks ago, and Schooler has his eye on the Worlds in the spring.
