Cycling Training Camp = Eat, Ride, Eat, (maybe eat some more) and then rinse and repeat. So when it comes to feeding 25+ hungry cyclists, it requires a little more than the usual trip to the grocery store. Both last year and this year we collected recipes weeks in advance, corrected portion sizes to match those of a rider, and collated a rather large spreadsheet of ingredients which later became the master shopping list.
As one can imagine, a small town like Borrego Springs (without any traffic lights, malls or dense population) might not be the ideal place to buy groceries for the aforementioned group of riders—they just didn’t have the capacity, especially in the banana department. Instead, we took a rental car over to Costco and proceeded to purchase the equivalent of ~$1500 worth of groceries including 10 quarts of Greek Yogurt, 15 dozen eggs, about 65 pounds of bananas, and over 50 pounds of meat (including tenderloin, bacon, whole roasting chickens and ground turkey). Throughout the shopping process, Shaena and I skillfully navigated 2 carts and a flat-bed through the store, packing and piling as we moved through each section of the store. More than once we were approached and asked for assistance shopping—apparently it was just too much food for anyone to believe we would purchase. In the end, we made it through checkout (with the help of no less than 6 different Costco employees), loaded up the van and headed to Borrego.
The meals really round off the trip. Not only are they delicious and cost effective for a group of our size, but they give us the chance to cook and eat together and build team camaraderie. Each night we’d have a head chef and a handful of support staff (can you imagine chopping 12 onions on your own?) putting together dinner, and then another 5 or so people on clean up (I think we used every dish for every meal!). In the end, the food is a small logistical piece of the whole puzzle that ends up adding another layer of decadence to an already amazing trip.
