This past weekend nearly 20 Endurance Nation athletes, members of the Minnisota and Illinois Sleeper Cells, met for a weekend of riding, training, and camaraderie in Madison, WI. The coolest part: this was a 100% member organized and directed event. What started out a suggestion in a forum thread snowballed to a full on training camp, with two swank cabins, camp t-shirts, team dinners at great steakhouses, and much more!
A solid handful of campers arrived on Thursday to get a headstart on the bike mileage, while Coach Rich began his day a 4am LA time to fly to Chicago and join the campers later in the day. Move campers arrived Thursday afternoon and we officially kicked off the camp with steaks at a grill-your-own steakhouse.
The next day started late in the saddle, as we waited for one very special camper, Josh Choate, aka _noodle_ to arrive. Josh had taken a red-eye flight from Las Vegas, arriving in the Twin Cities at 6am, then drove 4hrs to make the camp! Rich gave everyone a quick clinic on group riding and handling skills before we all set off to ride a loop of the IMWI course.
We had about 15 admin miles before we could get to the course. VERY strong crosswinds, narrow, rough roads and lots of turns meant it was tough to do our best TdF peleton imitation. We had one mishap on the way out, as camper RV it a bump and his stem exploded in his hands, ala Hincappie at last year’s Paris-Roubaix. Just some skin, no broken bones.
Despite our best attempts to fix the stem with ducktape and chicken wire, we dicided the bike was unrideable and we were in need of an extraction. Ron Gierut, aka Stringcheese, TT’ed back to his truck to evac RV and his bike, and the proceeded to ride 100+ miles solo in the WI countryside, his first time over 100 miles! Huzzah!
The rest of the group soldiered on to the IMWI course, regrouping at a gas station where Coach Rich demonstrated proper training ride fueling, with stomach “liberated” to aid digestion
The rest of the ride was windy, hot and windy, with a head or crosswind regardless of the direction we were riding. Very, very difficult to keep the group together through the wind and hills so we informally split into smaller groups to work with and look out for each other. At the final regroup in Verona, we discovered missing chainring bolts and a bent chainring, and one rider suffering from the heat. Rich and two other guys found a bike shop to replace the chainring, and a Michael’s Custard to wait for a ride home!
When we joined the rest of the team back at the cabins, turns out that an easy 22 mile ride home was more like 30+ with more, more, and more wind. But the lads had their priorities straight, downloading their powerfiles will BBQ’ing burgers and brats on the grill.
Saturday Forecast:
Wind and rain expected in the AM, becoming thunderstorms with possible hail and “crashing” temperatures after 12pm. Yes, Weather.com used the word “crashing.” So, plan was to be wheels up at 8am. No rain at 7:59 then, at the instant we clipped in, the skies opened up. Sigh.
We had a flat within a couple miles and split into small and large group. A few of the riders decided to call it a day early on, flipping to ride back to the cabins. The others continued on to Verona for a regroup, and the repairage of two flats, at a gas station.
30′ became 60′ until we finally decided it wasn’t going to get any better outside so we rolled, only to find it had dropped at least 10 degrees while we had been inside. 3-4 miles into the ride…another flat, this time on a country road with no shoulder in the wind and in the rain. We had a very dark moment as skinny dudes went close to hypothermic while the better insulated burned through all of the remaining tubes and Co2 to repair the flat. We called the cabin to have them send out a couple vehicles to pick us up rather than continue to ride in the rain with no spares. We got back on the road and met the vehicles about 6 miles from the cabins.
Rich held court the rest of the day, discussing training and racing with power, race execution, and Endurance Nation’s future plans as a long course triathlon team and coaching business. It was a great opportunity for Rich to meet and speak with his athletes and customers face to face on a number of topics.
We finally ended the camp with dinner at the Tied House Restaurant in Verona.
Rich’s camp debrief:
I don’t know too many coaches whose athletes assemble themselves to create a fun, super budget training weekend for themselves in Madison, WI in April, and have 20+ athlete show up. If you told me this kind of thing was going to be happen when Patrick and I started EN in November of 2007, I would have said you were nuts. Our NorCal and North East Sleeper Cells are following trail blazed by the MidWest folks to create their own camps in May and through the summer. That is just friggin’ cool. It was also very rewarding, as we sat around to tell jokes, lies, talk training and everything else, to hear “we,” “team,” etc many, many times. It’s personally very rewarding to know that we created a space where athletes from all over the country can feel like they are part of a unified, cohesive team. Patrick and I have also noticed that we have reached a point of critical mass in a few parts of the country, with more and more members coming on board from tight geographic locations. HThis points to a unique opportunity to have an entire schedule of these camps all over the US for the balance of this year and certainly for 2010. We will make this a bigger part of EN.
Finally, it was incredibly valuable to talk to the campers as athlete, coach, person, and business-owner. I had an opportunity to communicate our coaching and business vision for Endurance Nation, to help them see just how serious we are about creating an extremely high quality, high value product that works for them and for us. I think the campers came away with a much better understanding of Rich, Patrick, Endurance Nation, our direction and plans for the future.
In short, a fookin’ awesome weekend….though I could have done without the 40+ degree drop in temps, the wind and rain!
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