I have been approached by many of you over the past several months inquiring about the inner workings of Bandit Racing - how things work, who does what, training oversight, support staff, etc., and well as more general questions regarding how we deal with such diversity (finance and legal professionals on the same team), and what our hopes and dreams for the upcoming season are. I’d like to thank you all for your interest and patience, and while I can’t speak for the rest of the Bandits, I’ll do my best to cover the really important stuff to do with the gears and levers of this, our team.

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Wow, that was some cold riding this weekend. The Bandits did a couple short rides in an attempt to “out-tough” the weather. We saw some other guys out there also, and I’m sure they will all agree with me that it was about 5-10 degrees too cold to be remotely comfortable.

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When I first heard that I had to go to a “survival training camp” all I could think was “why?” Despite his public image of being awesome, that Jeff King is actually quite delusional and a bit of a narcissist. But I went reluctantly, and after a couple of days* in the remote corners of the Palisades State Forest (or whatever it’s called), I realized that Jeff may have been on to something. As much as I love training with my coaches (Mike Sherry and Craig Upton), they simply don’t cover basic outdoor survival training skills or team bonding activities. Los Banditos need to be prepared as a team to respond to anything and everything. This camp was the perfect training and the wilderness of southeastern Bergen County was the perfect spot … it’s easy to get to, there’s full Blackberry coverage, car service is available if needed, and Citarella delivers to the ranger station for a $20 additional charge.**

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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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Last weekend the CRCA/Bandit Racing team gathered for its first annual top-secret survival camp. Designed to teach the riders to rely on one another through trust-building exercises, the camp would prove to be the greatest challenge that many of them had ever faced.

The camp began with a treacherous ascent to an undisclosed location deep in the wilderness of New Jersey.  This challenging alpine terrain was the setting for days of intense physical training by Los Banditos.

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