Highlights: Meeting a protour rider, learning madison, hanging with friends in fine hotel rooms (thanks Accent Inns), hoping the rain turns to snow for skiing. Fabulous meals, each rider (w help from family) bringing one. Riders David, Evan, Duncan, Chris, Liam, Brenna, Ethan, and Alex are here. Bernie Pauly, and Alex's mum Nancy helping out.
Day one included Ethan learning to get his feet in the pedals and his first ride above the blue, getting the first falls out of the way; Chris Macleod dueled a camp-mate for space on the apron and lost, but mostly pride and not skin. Duncan Grant got taken out from above by Nigel from Courtenay riding too slow on the banking. He slid at least 75 feet from near the top of the banking, but bounced up and rode after checking out some very minor scrapes. Still went in the hot tub last night too.
Liam, Duncan, and Evan learned the madison sling, working up from riding with one hand behind the back, through pushing a team mate, to the full on hand sling.
One of the highlights was a casual q and a with Olympian and Protour rider Svein Tuft from the Greenedge team. Svein spoke about his start as a avid outdoorsman who rode a mountain bike to alaska on a mountain bike with a trailer loaded with climbing gear and his dog. Then discovering, while working in a bike shop at 23, how fast those legs would propel a light race bike , and vaulting from beginner to nationals road race break in one season, then Tour de L'Avenir in 16 months. (Note to self: work on base fitness).
He also spoke well about long term health, the importance of cross training in winter for bone and joint health, nutrition, the role of a domestique (do the first 250 km of Milan San Remo at 400-500 watts to keep it together for the sprinter (a dude well-named Farrar too! If only...), then call it a day.
How you can feel like crap and still win (US Open, in 4 inches of snow, but won solo, while other guys were shaking themselves off the bike with cold).
Use the winter to train fat burning: IE eat less during training rides, and keep the intensity lower. (applies more to senior male road riders, but also to grand fondo riders). These pathways spare the use of glycogen, the exhaustion of which is the "bonk".
And an interesting thought: he was asked what the worst part of training was, and he said the best part was the training. When he quit for a year (reputedly in disgust at the doping) he found himself going just as hard in his skiing and hiking, and figured he might was well get paid to go hard.
boys were actively lobbying for a madison to be added to the race program Thursday night, but the organizer hadn't seen them ride and declined. In the end, the four days of camp plus racing took it's toll and Evan and Liam dropped back to a c race on the last day. But they raced well and took some chances. Earlier Liam went for the first sprint in the B points race and got half a lap and the first place points, but didn't ease off, spent a few laps off the front and was cooked by the time the bunch caught him. After dangling at the back for couple of laps as the pack jammed, he was gapped.