Team Camp in Seattle/Road trip

Last week, Hagens-Berman held our first team camp of 2015. We learned about all of the products we’ll be using this year. I won’t go through and explain all of them right now, but I think I’ll highlight different ones throughout the year on this blog. What I can tell you is we will be rolling absolutely top notch gear. For a u23 team to have Protour level gear is a big opportunity and we’ll strive to repay that investment.

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Gear from Oakley, Giro, Castelli, Powerbreathe, and Redcord

The most important thing about any team camp, however, is getting to know each other and building a good team spirit. We did a few activities to work on this, from making a human pyramid to doing an hour long puzzle challenge. We’ll get to know each other better on the bike at our next camp in California.

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Visiting the offices of Hagens-Berman
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Team selfie

Since the camp, Thorsten (my teammate) and I have driven across the country and met up with the team, raced Valley of the Sun, and now a few of us are settling into host housing outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Now I’m looking forward to a a good blockĀ of training in the warmth. I already went on a good ride today. It took me a while to find my way out of a seemingly endless sea of dead ends and confusing neighborhoods, but I eventually found my way out to a nature preserve and got to rip around on some dirt roads. To find my way back, I ran Google Maps through my headphones so my phone just read me the directions for when to turn.

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Riding near Venice Beach in LA
Starting a time trial

I’ve had a busy few weeks so settling into a good training routine and preparing for big objectives like Redlands in April is the focus of the next month.

Most of these photos are by @coffeeintheam.

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I found a cool rock
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Some of the roads I found