The Big Show

Sorry for the lack of updates in the last few days. They tell me the type of uppity hotels like the one we're staying in here in Santa Rosa don't generally have free internet access. What a trip. Giant Plasma TV, granite bathroom, down bedding, but no WiFi. You learn something new every day...

Anyway, there has been a lot going on here at camp - maybe too much to even write about, but a quick snapshot of a day here has looked like this: Wake up, eat breakfast, get ready to ride, wait on Taylor Phinney to get ready to ride, ride, eat lunch, meet with sponsors, get free gear, eat dinner, get more free gear, and sleep. Yes, it's quite a days work, especially when you consider that the whole time that we are doing all of the above things we are being filmed and/or photographed by any of about 5 different camera crews from Versus, VeloNews, Trek USA, Trek Japan, and some other documentary filmmakers. The idea is that when our website goes up sometime next week, we will have a bunch of cool footage and photos for everyone to check out. I'll let you all know as soon as the website goes live.

As far as the actual training is concerned, things have been pretty much perfect. On Tuesday Lance joined us for a four-hour ride through the hills between here and Napa. There are a bunch of photos of the ride on Velonews here. After an unassuming first hour of doodling along, Lance took us up the back side of Trinity grade, which was about a 6-mile long steep climb on narrow roads. It was beautiful, but the beauty quickly faded as Lance took to the front for a nice 'Tempo' effort. Before we were halfway up the climb, he had shattered our whole team, and left me gasping for air. I ended up making it to the top second out of our team. The cool thing about it was that while desperately trying to hold his wheel, I set some personal-best peak power outputs (by a longshot), and apparently everybody else did too. It was pretty amazing climbing next to Lance at 400-500 watts, and watching him pump away smooth as butter while I was clawing at my machine like a madman.

After the carnage, we regrouped and did some sweet descents. I thought I had stuck it to Lance on one particularly fast and curvy descent, only to have him fly by me on the inside like it was nothing and ride away from everyone. After being flogged once more on another climb back toward Santa Rosa, we spun it in on the flats for a while. There was a car following us the whole ride taking footage for a documentary, and riding at the front meant splitting time between trying to look good for all the cameras, and chatting with Lance about everything from fine wines to our preferences and roots in music (he was quite proud about having been first chair cornet in the middle school orchestra - "First chair man, number one. I was it man...").

The next day we did a 5.5 hour ride over King's ridge and back along highway 1. It was hands down the most beautiful ride I've ever done. We kept it at endurance pace, which was a blessing because my legs were still burning from the day before. We rode mostly on one-lane farm roads that wound up, down, and side to side through the redwoods and cow pastures, and then dropped down an amazing 10-15% descent onto the coast, where we cruised for a while before heading all the way back. It was a wierd feeling being so tired but still wanting to ride. After a massage and about 5000 calories worth of Italian food, I went to sleep and slept like never before, looking forward to a bit of a recovery day to follow.

So today was a bit of a recovery ride, and we brought along a bunch of sponsors. It rained like heck, but I was glad to only have to spend 2.5 hours out in it, instead of 5 or 6 like the rest of the Astana guys. It was also nice to chat with all the guys that have helped out our team with all the awesome products we've gotten over the past few weeks. From there it was off to lunch and a photo session (again), and now I find myself here in the Flying Goat Coffee Shop trying to get all my internet stuff done in the hour or so that I have before the next item on the itenerary.

Well that was a long post, but I feel like I have only covered just a bit of all the exciting stuff that's been going on here. I'll have more on my experience here soon...