…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.