Our team had cycling camp in Lutz, Florida for the second straight year. Rather than coming from Korea this year I decided to drive from my new location of Fort Worth, Texas. It took 16 hours, but luckily I stopped in Louisiana and picked up one of my teammates and a great mentor, Andy Chocha. We arrived to Lutz late afternoon Saturday and the rest of the team wasn't coming to town till the following day. Chocha headed out for a ride, since it was cycling camp and all, and I headed out for a long run. Nice way to shake the legs out after a long drive. After that we got settled into the hotel and tried to get some sleep as Sunday we were heading to the local San Antonio group ride.
The Elite Team Director Sean Coleman is a local to the area so we showed up for the second year to the San Antonio Group Ride. It is a great group of local guys and a pretty fast ride. It was a solid 55 miles of some intense work. A few of us got up the road and just hammered away from the group for the first 30 miles. Then the last 25 was just a decent workout and that was that
Sunday afternoon everyone had arrived to camp and we had a quick meeting. We then headed over to the local bar and got some dinner and watched the superbowl, other than that uneventful evening.
The next 5 days were pretty much all the same: Wake up, eat breakfast, go ride, eat dinner, team meeting, sleep, REPEAT X5. Well other than Thursday we did an Eddy Mercx TT, which I did horrible in compared to last year, but I had ridden and ran a lot more up to that point then the previous year. We also had various people come in and talk about products, coaching and training. Bill Shook from American Classics came in, Geni Bean from FRS, Jeb Stewart and Roy Foley from EnduroFit and then the one and only AF Nutritionist Jim Weinstein. Lots of good topics were covered by all of them and as a group everyone learned a lot.
Saturday was race day, which would be my first Pro / CAT1 / CAT2 race. It was a 17 mile loop that we did 4 times. I knew it was going to be tough, there were some short punchy "climbs" and since I hadn't been training like a cyclist I knew those were going to kill me. I hung on through it all, but then came the last 3 short punchy "climbs", I say climbs because in FL if it gains any elevation it is a climb there ;) I tried to hang on but the field exploded and off they went. I ended up rolling in off the back with a few other guys and overall it was just a solid day of training. I ended up 56th out of 90, so not horrible. After the race a few of us decided to ride back to the hotel, which was great until it got dark on us and well yeah that made for a fun trip down the Sun Coast Trail.
And that was the brief details about camp. In summary, it made me realize what life can be like training full time and not having anything else to worry about. It is something to dream about and something that will keep me getting out of bed every morning, so one day that dream can become a reality. Until then I will continue to serve my country, be a full time student, and train as much as I can.
Stats from camp:
8 Days of Camp, 35h43m, 656.5 total miles.
Bike (7 days): 628.4 miles / 30h43m / 1310 TSS / 19,579 Kj's.
Run (5 days): 38.1 miles / 5hours / rTSS 356.
Combined CTL from 81 to 103
Pictures from Camp and Race for Humanity:
A bad wreck halted the field for 10 minutes so here we are relaxing, that is Chocha to my right.
All of our Military riders got call ups to the front of the start line.
The "Elite" Team, a few guys weren't at camp and this was basically all of our CAT 1/2 guys that were there.
My office for the week. Thanks ISM for the awesome Bar Tape!
3 hours into a 5 hour ride downing a can of FRS, healthy FUEL!
All about keeping the sponsors happy, but the stuff is damn good!
Working in our 4 man "break" with a chase group behind.
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