For this year’s winter training camp, the team headed to Santa Ysabel, CA for 8 days of fabulous riding! This post has accounts and pictures from days 1-4 and the next post will cover days 5-8.
On day 1, we had intended to have a relatively easy ride to start off the trip, but vicious winds made it harder than most of us had bargained for. Here’s Lee’s account of the ride:
“It was still dark outside when I woke up the first morning in Santa Ysabel. This was my first WTC with the team, and today would be the first day of riding. The last couple of days I had been feeling a bit nervous. I knew I would be doing more riding in the next week than I had ever come close to doing in such a short space of time before, and my main hope going into training camp was just to last until the end of the week. But as the sun came up that morning, any lingering apprehension immediately gave way to excitement. After months of being stuck inside on the trainer, I’d finally be riding outside again. And with the forecast that day calling for temperatures in the 70s, I had none of the layering-related anxieties that are normally a fixture of my winter riding routine. All I would need were bib shorts and a short sleeve jersey, and I’d be ready to go.
Since nearly everyone’s sleep schedules were still stuck on East Coast time, we had no problem getting ready to roll out at 8 in the morning. The weather that morning was perfect, with hardly a cloud in the sky, and the first 35 miles of the ride flew by. We put in several intense efforts on the intermittent flats and hills, but we were mostly helped along by gravity on the first part of the ride, descending 3,500 ft over those first 35 miles and averaging 23 mph. When we stopped at mile 35, it was hard to believe we were already more than halfway through the ride. Realizing that I had not eaten yet, I went to work on the food that I had stuffed into my jersey pockets before leaving the house that morning. Unfortunately I made the mistake of eating based on the mileage we had ridden rather than on my actual level of exertion, and since coasting downhill doesn’t burn many calories, I ended up overeating by quite a bit. I’d later regret it. I knew we were being helped along by gravity on the first part of our loop, but I didn’t realize at the time that we were also being pushed on by a very generous tailwind. As we reached the outermost point of our loop and turned back toward Santa Ysabel, the tailwind that I failed to notice earlier turned into a nasty headwind, and the challenge of climbing 3,500 ft back to the house, which I was previously looking forward to, suddenly became a daunting task.
The ride back to the house that day was the most difficult stretch of riding I’ve ever done on a bike. My most vivid memories from the ride back are struggling for the longest time to reach 6 mph up a 5% gradient due to the wind, feeling nauseous the whole way after having eaten way too much food at our mile 35 stop, and suffering a sudden leg cramp so severe that I had to get off the bike and stretch before I could even clip my right leg back into my bike, let alone pedal with the leg. The group had also split up in the second half of the ride, so I was riding on my own for most of that time. With about 10 miles to go I saw that Amy had stopped on the side of the road, and I pulled over too. Sarah joined us a short while later, and having gotten some much-needed rest and having found some much-needed company, the three of us rode the final 10 miles back to the house together.
When we finally arrived back at the house, I didn’t feel the relief I was expecting to feel the whole time I was struggling back. I felt even more nauseated after getting off the bike than I did on it, and my right leg was still killing me. (Thankfully both the nausea and the cramping were gone by the next morning, and neither returned at all that week.) But now when I reflect on that first day of WTC, I realize that it is just as inextricable from my overall WTC experience as every other day that week would become. Just as I would later in the week do my biggest climb ever, and on a different day that week do my longest ride ever, in the return trip on that first day I did the most difficult stretch of riding that I have ever done in my life. Even if my personal suffering was all I could think about during the ride, what I now remember most from that first day was having my teammates there with me when I needed them. Beginning with the last 10 miles of that first ride, which I’m certain I could not have done alone, my teammates were there for me throughout the week to help me get through the rough times, and to make the good times even better. Thanks to them, the week of WTC has been by far the best experience I’ve had in grad school, and I’m already looking forward to doing it again next year.”
On day 2, we tackled our first HC climb of the trip, ‘Kitchen Creek’. Here’s what Joanna had to say about the ride:
and fit in plenty of stretching!
Stay tuned for days 5-8!