I just got back to my apartment after the Bandit Racing camp. Upon entering, I collapsed on the floor in pure exhaustion. All I can say is: wow, that was an amazing, intense, soul cleansing experience. The idea of a survival camp was not ours, but stolen from the bigger pro teams. It seemed like everybody was holding a survival camp; if we wanted to compete at the highest level, we needed to hold our own camp in order to bring the team together. It might sound trite, but I am finding it hard to adjust to the real world again. The camp changed something in all of us; it made us all better people. Hopefully this diary gives you an idea of what we went through.

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Training Summary:

So far, training has been better than last year.  But that hasn’t been hard to do because this time last year, I was recovering from shoulder surgery (I crashed in the 2005 Turkey race and broke my collarbone) and had to take 9 weeks off the bike.  So, this year’s weekend rides have been a big improvement from the vicodin hazes of last year.

We formed Bandit Racing with the idea of having a very low-key team of friends who ride and race together for fun.  We don’t take ourselves seriously as a cycling team and all have similar racing goals (none?). So far, it has been working as planned and The Banditos have been riding on the weekends together, which is a blast.  Immature behavior and bathroom humour is at a premium on these rides.  We just go out and B.S. the whole time; it reminds me of the good old days of college racing in Colorado.  We met up with Ted Neu a few days ago and he stopped in Nyack with us.  I can comfortably say that Ted was the most intelligent, sane, mature person I have ridden with in a long time. 

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I have 3 main skills with computers:

1. Excel

2. PowerPoint

3. Clicking on links that people send me in the hope that something funny or work related opens

So, I this is out of my skillset but I have just been given a tutorial from EMH and a pep talk of “Jeff, this is really easy. I am surprised that you are struggling with it so much”.  Anyway, EMH set up this ”King’s Korner” section and I plan on using it to tell stories that put me in a favorable light and make my teammates look foolish.  You need to understand that I only read emails and postings that I have written myself, so this blog will soon be my favourite site.  I will check it after training rides and races to see what positive things I have written about myself.

I will not:

1. Post power data - I don’t use a powermeter and/or a HR monitor.

2. Give detailed play by play of the races - those are boring

3. Post pictures - I would like to but I doubt that I can figure out how to.