Rocky Mountain Devo Camp Day 2

Day two at camp and we got down to business today.  One of the main focuses of the camp, as it was last year, is the Ute Valley XC race.  This year it happens to be part of the national tour- so its bound to be a pretty big race with some good national competition.  Since it is an important part of camp, today was spent checking out the course.

One really nice thing about Colorado Springs is that you can get virtually anywhere around town via recreational paths.  Colorado College is an 8 mile ride away from the race venue, and we were able to spin over to the venue hitting virtually no roads...just awesome.  So this morning we cruised over to the venue, of course checking out some trails along the way.  Once at the venue we broke everybody up into 4 groups and worked on riding the course first to get a feel for the difficult sections.  Once we finished  a lap we headed out again and whatever section someone had difficulty with we hung out and practiced it until the riders were all comfortable.  One particular section was right at the beginning of the lap as it was a pretty technical rocky downhill section.

The majority of the morning was spent riding around the course, talking about good places to pass, places to drink, sections to be ready for.  We finally rolled back to College for lunch and had a little down time before the afternoon skills session.  In terms of fitness and physical exertion, this was pretty low key- which was good since we were riding for a solid 3 hours in the morning.  Instead the afternoon focused on basic bike handling skills.  It was a surprise for me coming into camp to find that practicing and developing skills is really the focus of camp, and is really the direction that rider development is heading.  Fitness will come later on, but being able to develop great bike handling skills right away they are finding is much more beneficial.

So the rest of the afternoon was spent running drills like learning to bunny hop, riding in groups, doing water bottle hand offs, and straight line riding exercises...all topped off with a little game of team bike basketball (not really a good name for it).

After the skills session it was back to college to review the race course again, which we did first by recalling everything from memory.  Then after dinner the kids got to watch the GoPro video I shot of our lap pre-ride earlier (its 20 minutes long...I doubt anyone wants to see that plugged in here) cleaned the bikes and got ready to race tomorrow.

We'll have some Cat 2 riders heading out early with one coach to be there early for their 9:15 start, I'll head out with the Cat 1 riders and another coach a little later for our 11:00 start.  I actually get to say "our" start on this one, because it sounds like all the coaches will be freed up for the cat 1 race, soooooo they don't need much from me....soooooo I that means that since he offered for me to race I better take advantage of it.  So yeah, I'll be hoping into the Cat 1 race as well (even though I've bee racing pro/open at home, I've been doing that under the "open" class, here the race is strictly those with a pro license).

Much more to come!

Rocky Mountain Devo Camp Underway! Day 1

I've been getting excited to come out to Colorado Springs for this development camp for a long time now.  I traveled out here Wednesday-first time flying with a bike so I was pretty nervous about how everything would go.  Fortunately the flight to Denver and drive down to Colorado Springs were uneventful- although I could see the massive wildfires in Fort Collins as we approached Denver.  When I left Maine it was 60 degrees and pouring rain.  As we landed in Denver it was 92 and bone dry.  I felt the moisture getting actively sucked out of my skin.  How do people live in the desert? This was enough of a shock   

I got to Ryan's house (camp director) as he was making his way home from a local race.  After chatting and dinner I got to building up my bike/ praying that it survived the plane ride.  As I unpacked everything looked great, I even got this neat postcard from the TSA telling me they "randomly" selected my luggage for a search...which was interesting because everyone else who flew hear was "randomly" selected as well.  The only scare came when I had trouble located the plastic bag that had pedals, quick release, rotor bolts, tools...you know kinda essential stuff to a bike.  I started to run through the worst case scenarios of "how did I leave that out?!?!?!"  Before I went into full blown panic mode I completely emptied the box, and low and behold the bag was there under my wheels- not even close to where I packed it.  thanks TSA.  Anyways, got most of the bike put together and finished it off the this morning with a cup of coffee by my side.  Rough way to start a morning, huh?

 After getting everything together it was off to Colorado College for the arrival of the riders.  I thought the view of the rockies from campus was great, apparently this is actually hazed over becuase of the wildfire smoke drifting down to us.  Today was mostly a check in day, riders came in throughout the morning and we planned to do a quick afternoon ride while waiting for any late stragglers.  Seems like everyone was pretty amped to get to camp because the whole camp (21 riders!) was checked in before lunch.  After lunch, we quickly changed and headed out for the first ride of the camp.

A major focus of the camp this year is racing on Saturday at the Ute Valley Pro XCT race right here in town.  As such, nothing strenuous was scheduled for today and it was a good chance to get everyone out to stretch the legs and play around on some fun local trails right here in town.  Here's where my job at camp first started to kick in- play ride leader and I nominated myself ride photographer as well.  I like these easy spinning rides- plenty of time to reach into a jersey pocket, pull your iphone out of the plastic back, take your glove off, snap a bunch of photos, and get everything put back together while still on the roll...I don't think this is one of the "skills" that is the focus of the week, but hey it comes in handy!

 As we navigated through the trails (I have no idea what they were called, but they were fun!) there were plenty of options for the group to split as we had myself, Ryan, and Kip all leading.  While nobody opted for the "hey we can do this 30 min climb and hit this crazy downhill" option, there were plenty of times where we did do little extra loops.

After the ride it was back to the dorms, dinner, and then the official introductions.  Great group so far, and they're from all over- Colorado, Utah, Montana, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire.  We went over the schedule for the week and discussed the process of getting into the USA Cycling Development track.  Even though it day one, everyone is pretty wiped, as they're all pretty excited to do well at the race on Saturday.

Tomorrow we'll head out to the course in the morning to pre-ride and session on the technical aspects that people want to figure out.  The afternoon will have skills sessions and then pre-race talks in the evening.  Well, off to drink my 14th bottle of water and try to fight jet lag and altitude (okay, its only 2 hours difference, and its only 6000 ft of elevation, but I've gotta have some excuse, right?)