Camps and Such

As usual much has been going on since my last post. After Matt left, VeloSports put on a very successful MTB skills camp, then a few days later I headed off to the Inferno road team camp in Macon GA. This camp was tough...not from a riding perspective, but from a work perspective. Since Wobble Naught is a sponsor of the team we had to fit all the riders in just a couple of days time. We had "king wobble" himself (Tom Coleman) helping with fits and doing video analysis with Dartfish (more on that in an upcoming post)....along with myself, team rider and fitter Jim Baldesare and 55-Nine WN fitter Eddie O'Day. Even with all of us working non-stop it took 2 full days to get everyone set up. I spent so much time crawling around on the floor taking measurements and setting up bikes it left my back in a terrible state, BUT we got everyone set. One really cool note is that Thomson was the main sponsor of the camp (special thanks to Dave Parrett)....and at one point we had a few riders having trouble getting proper saddle set back (including myself) due to the Masi frame geometry, saddle rails on our new SDG saddles and the 1.6cm setback of the Thomson posts. How to solve the problem? Simple: have Dave custom bend some posts at the Thomson factory to get additional set-back......I feel pretty special now :) . Kudos to Chad Thompson for putting together an incredible team for 2008 and all the team sponsors for the support. There are a few sponsors in particular I will be talking about in future posts....stay tuned.

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So after a couple of tough days with that work and other logistics, we got to some good riding in great weather. We actually cut loose a few times and let some of the riders with a little better early season fitness kick it up.....the last 10 miles of the saturday ride was particularly fun. Sunday was a short ride dedicated to photos and the like....then after everyone headed home, I was able to get Tom to take a look at my TT set up and make a few really cool refinements. After that it was the drive home and back to work.

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My back was pretty darned sore when I got home from all the fitting work, and Tuesday I somehow managed to make a wrong move and pull a muscle in my lower back. Ouch. It was pain, pain , pain....so much I could hardly move, let alone get on a bike. The closest pain that I can compare it to was my hernia repair back in the early 90s.....yes the pain was THAT bad. It was frustrating not being able to ride for a few days....and the recovery was gradual, but is almost complete. I was worried about the TT we were going to on Saturday , but it turned out that my back was not a limiting factor in performance at all.

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Friday night we headed over to TN for the Spring Forward 40KM TT. The weather forecast was dismal, more like cyclocross weather, but we were determined to get it done. The weather was in fact abysmal: 30 degrees, snowing and gale force winds made for an interesting event. The course was quite rolling....not much flat, mostly big rollers....more down on the way out and more up on the way back. Cara finished with a couple of inches of ice caked on her bike. The wind was close to a full on head wind going out and it was a struggle to keep the bike up to speed and going straight. I dressed with multiple layers and heavy gloves...which was a good choice. I took the turn -around at about 30 minutes....slow! and my power was all over the place, very difficult to keep a steady rhythm with the conditions. After the turn was easier to be steady and even though there was more elevation gain, I was FLYING getting through sustained sections at around 38MPH....ahh tailwinds feel good. I was over 5 minutes faster coming back. I felt good about the ride even though power and time was poor. I felt I managed the conditions well and put in a solid ride. Turned out I had the fastest time of the day by quite a bit....and Cara had the fastest women's time as well...so it was worth the trip.

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out for now

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a2