Camp worked out pretty well this year. I'm definitely a lot more optimistic that we're going to put the hurt on people this season. Last season we definitely had some races where we got some good results, but too often there were not too many people showing up to race and when they did, we only had a couple guys who were getting podium results.
As an example, at last season's camp I was the third person up Montezuma (a 1 hour climb that averages a 6 to 7% grade). There's no way that a guy like me who weighs 180 pounds and has limited ability to pull up on his left leg should be beating the vast majority of the team up something like that. This time I was somewhere like 10th out of 28 guys, so that's much more encouraging from the perspective of team quality.
The past couple years I've been at camp it's been a hilly, long day on Saturday. There's the slog up Montezuma. Then we head down the S22 and turn left on San Felipe, where a hammer-fest ensues as we blast our way down to the 78 for lunch. At that point, people are usually pretty gassed. Then we have some sort of combination of racing/pace-lining back east on the 78 to Borrego Valley Road. From there it's often a casual ride back home, not so much this year however. If you know Borrego Valley, it heads through a small valley, which of course gives everyone the desire to attack up the hill.
Sunday we head out to an empty development on the north side of Borrego where we break up into small teams and practice some criterium strategies. Here are a couple pictures of me heading through the corner before the finishing straight.
In this first one, I'm in the process of trying to bridge from the chase group to the break-away. Our team of three had a good strategy going into this race; however, the guy we had up the road ended up getting bounced out of the break about half way through the race. That left me and my remaining team-mate trying to get up to the break that was about 30-45 seconds up the road. Unfortunately I never made it, but certainly felt the pain while trying.
This second one comes from the second race where I was chilling in the chase group.
For more team camp images, you can check out my team-mate John Nuttall's site:
2 comments:
loving the new kits this year.
Yup the new uniforms are boss. Dan Goese (www.lajollavelo.com), one of our sponsors put it together. At first I wasn't a big fan of the black, but when you see it live, it definitely is a winner. Hopefully we'll stay with these colors for a little while.
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