A solid block of travel complete, with our luggage(and a 3k surcharge for it!) trailing well behind us, today we enjoyed a relaxing one just outside of Marseille. After dialing in another set of new bikes we headed out for a nice cruise, guided by Dan, who lived just down the road for a couple of years while racing as an amateur for VC la Pomme. Alex Howes, one of the young guys on the team last year, is now here in the area and while he’s currently off at a training camp it’s fun to get a feel for where he’s hangin. We have another 2 days to get fully adjusted now before starting up on Sunday. Now that i’m finally sitting in a mini euro hotel room it feels like the season is fully upon us…. Figure racing will make that even more so.
It’s been good to see some of the staff that we haven’t been with for the past 2 months, and they brought up some pretty sick new toys as well. Pictures of the new bus coming shortly. A bit more styly than the camper of the past few years, although she’s still around for the times when we’re running a double program(most of the time).
Unfortunately we also just heard that big Maggie Backstedt crashed in quatar and snapped his collarbone, putting his early season in danger, and lots of fingers are crossed for a quick heal-up there. Send some good juju his way if you’re that kind of person…
And send some juju for a jump in food quality as well. I’m constantly amazed that in a country with such general pride for it’s cuisine, and such amazing food on the top end, how absolutely shit most of what people mow into is in reality. While there is occasionally one saving grace in each “feed” sometimes even that is hard to find. Looking forward to heading south into Spain where even the simple fare is attended to with a skotche more TLC…

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…until our LOOOONG Silver City camp comes to a close and I head over to Europe and the start of the season.  I’ve just posted my schedule and the first half of the year is going to be a blur - some exciting races, great opportunities, and fantastic motivation going forward should help things in the less than easy times surely ahead.  

 Silver has been surprisingly nice and I’ve enjoyed as never before the nothingness side of camp.  When you’re not riding, getting massage, stretching, eating or in meetings there is a LOT of down time, and here in Silver there are very few distractions.  Our hotel is a couple of miles from downtown, so no walking around and seeing the “sights.” On each of the recovery days we’ve headed down to Javalina and set up shop for a while to enjoy some great cafe and some cinnamon rolls that are second to none.  Otherwise I don’t think I’ve left the hotel and the well shaped indentation in my bed other than to ride or head to town for dinners.  After the constant pull of things while at home it’s actually nice to just chill with a good book or try and find the end of the internet for hours on end. 

While one group of guys is already off to Quatar the rest of us are wrapping up in Silver and getting ready to head our separate ways.  8 of us head to Marseille for the French season openers, another crew heads to the Bahamas and then Tour of CA, and the rest get a few days at home before joining most of us over in Girona.  The team has come together incredibly and with a lot of structured intensity out on the rides everybody has made some solid gains.  Training hasn’t been so hard as to overload things, but rather just hard enough with the right amount of recovery mixed in to enable everybody to fully absorb and progress.  Dr. Lim is a damn smart dude… I don’t know if I would have said that in the middle of our 15k TTT efforts today, but, well, ya know.  We’ve also managed to put in some good time together as a, nearly, whole group and continue the bonding of our November camp a bit.  From this point forward there will rarely be a time where more than 10 or 12 of us are in the same place at the same time and thus this part of the team building process is that much more important.

The media component to this camp as also been interesting, and now Versus has joined us for our last few days here in Silver.  It’s been pretty entertaining watching a 20 person TV crew roll around trying to capture our little world.  The guys from Sundance just left, after getting way more footage than they could ever use, but with the Wal-Mart across the street providing cheap toys there have been some quality shots of remote controlled planes and helicopters dive bombing the mechanics parking lot and some morning core strength work sessions that couldn’t have possibly been scripted better.  Meatball is going to pretty much own that thing and it’s probably good that way…maybe…I think.  We also got back from yesterday’s ride to find a stack of the latest Velonews with the team on the cover and a couple of great articles mid-mag.  It’s been exciting to watch everything come together recently and with the great press that we’ve started the year with hopefully we’ll animate things a bit in the months ahead and keep it coming. 

 For now I get to look forward to another solid day tomorrow, a few hours chill with photos on Monday with a drive to Tucson in the evening and then after a short ride Tuesday AM a loooong travel day and a half to the south of France.  At least right now the weather is looking solid - 2 years ago it was snowing for these races.  Fingers crossed.    

Bonnie Ford just posted up a HUGE feature on Slipstream that can be found here: ESPN.com article.

Camp is going well; lots of new bikes, gear, and a few new faces. The past few days have been pretty chill and we start ramping up the training today with a good one.

I’ve been reading an interesting book by noted Psychology Prof Jonathan Haidt called The Happiness Hypothesis. It’s been sitting on the shelf for a year or two now and in my little bit of searching recently I picked it up and started thumbing through. He uses a couple of interesting analogies, most frequently one of a rider (the conscious) on an elephant(the subconscious), that carry through much of the book, but I just read a bit about “Flow” and how flow, after food and sex, is the next most satisfying and “happy” thing that people experience at any point in life. Makes a bit of sense with the whole bike racing/riding and happiness thing. It uses skiing, driving a car on an empty, interesting road, and surfing as examples as well.

Yep, a bunch of randomness here, but I’d recommend this book to anybody and just thought I’d throw it out there.

Both because she just got her ACL repaired and is wearing a damn cone around her head, but also because she saw the suitcases out and knows what that means. Hopefully she didn’t look at the schedule and see that I don’t return home til June.
Off to training camp in Silver City for 2 weeks and then straight to Marseille for the first races of the year. Damn that off season went by quickly… Fortunately looking ahead at the opportunities the coming year has to offer it’s hard not to be excited.  Although there is going to be some serious shock to the system in store for a still off-season “fit” Coloradan, everything is a bit easier with everything on the docket in the months to come.

Onto a wee puddle jumper for now but much to come from camp in the days ahead….

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The first few days of this new year I’ve spent some solid bed and couch time trying to recover from a little stomach bug, and a good chunk of that time was spent reflecting and digging into myself a bit about what is really important in my life. The initial list was long, and as I ran down this mental sheet of bullet points I found that so many of them shared one or two key foundation points that it surprised me a bit, though not for too long. Maybe it is the id taking a bit too much control but Happiness and Fun were the two major, very general themes in my little list of importants with a bit of Balance just behind. Obviously there were others, and others with far, far more importance on a micro scale, but as far as the big, all encompassing picture it was cemented in my mind more and more firmly that if you aren’t truly happy and having fun doing what you’re doing that changes need to happen and issues need to be addressed. Recognizing that there will doubtless be days when you hate what you’re doing, whether it be riding a bike or sitting in traffic on the way to the office, but big picture, does what you do bring you happiness and satisfaction. I feel lucky that cycling, somehow, manages to do this for me and despite those few and far between, but oft cited examples when it absolutely sucks, it’s a great life, and a hell of a lot of fun. I feel lucky that I can say the same with a broad range of hobbies and passions that while sometimes consuming and distracting add a bit of balance, something also so critical in life. Strong friendships and relationships; these and all of the other elements of life must on one level or another fit in to this big picture and both illustrate and animate your life like the many layers of a great painting.

What am I saying here? Not sure, I guess it’s something of a New Year’s Re…alization.? But it was interesting to me at the time and while I don’t normally go beyond the surface sheen of things on this blog I figured it could be a welcome change and prompt a bit of thought.

Happy New Year, and for those still with a bit of gut rot going on give that ginpediale cocktail a try - just like wine, or something.