On the agenda, breakfast was scheduled for 6-9am, but unfortunately we didn't know that the dining hall only started serving breakfast at 7:30am. Me and a couple of the guys were stuck waiting outside for about 15 minutes before food was ready. Breakfast was yummy, but the waffles weren't worth it, especially with vaguely maple-flavored corn syrup. Then it was picture time. We got our USA development camp jerseys and took a camp picture. The jerseys are a little funny, because they've been seriously redesigned since last year, when they were mainly red, white, and blue. This years jerseys are red, yellow, black, and blue, with a smidgeon of white. I don't think anyone is sure why. After that, we pinned on our numbers (spares from a Memorial Day Crit), and headed out to the course. Our start order was alphabetical, though they told us that for the second field test it would be reverse alphabetical. This meant that I went last.
When we got to the start, everyone had to be weighed. We got weighed with our bikes, then without. We got weighed with everything we were racing with, so any water we were going to drink before our start had to be on the bike. A bunch of us have power meters on our bikes, so the coaches could use our data to help calibrate the course so that everyone's approximate power and power to weight could be calculated. The data gets sent to USA Cycling to help them learn about each of us as riders, to pick out the strongest and also as data points to track improvements year to year.
Anyway, finally it was my turn to head up the climb. I wasn't feeling great, in fact my legs felt terrible - super heavy and tired. I did ok up the climb, though most of the boys beat me. Anyway, a lot of them are super skinny so I don't feel so bad about being beaten by them. The climb was about 2k, and it took me 6:10 to get up it. My average power was approximately 323 W, though I'll have to take a closer look at the data to tell for sure. After the climb, we did a bit more riding then headed in for a nice lunch.
After lunch, it was back on the bikes for us. We spent four hours in a parking lot doing a whole bunch of drills. We split up into eight groups of four, and practices some skills. For each skill, we got a demonstration, then time to practice it. After four skills, we did a relay where each team member had to perform the skill. The first skill was to ride in a straight line while looking over our shoulders at teammates riding behind us. The next skill was to pick up a water bottle from the ground, then take a bottle that a teammate was holding out (like a feed). It took me a little while to figure out how to get low enough on the bike to reach the bottle. Next, the musette bag grab. We figured out how to hold the bag to make a nice big target, then practiced taking the bag with each arm. Once we had the bag, we had to get it over our helmet so that the bag would lay on our back so as to not throw us off balance. Last in that set was the bike throw and panic stop combo. The motion is nearly the same, except with the panic stop you also engage the brakes while throwing your weight backwards. Everyone on my team completed the skills, but we weren't very fast.
The second set of skills was in my opinion much harder. First, the skill was to ride across the parking lot with no hands, then turn (using hands) and return with no hands. For me, this was very difficult, because unlike all of the cocky teenage boys who like to show off their skills, I don't regularly practice things like riding no handed. Unfortunately for me, the next two skills were much much easier if you were comfortable riding with no hands. One was to put on and take off a pair of arm warmers while riding (in a very short distance), and the next was to put on and take off a vest. The arm warmers were hard, but I figured out that if I rested my forearms on the bars, both hands were free to pull the warmers onto my wrists, but I still had control of my bike. Once the warmers were on my wrists, pulling them up was easy. Taking them off was pretty easy too, since I've actually tried that one before. The vest wasn't too bad, as long as you got it right side out, not tangled up. The hard part was zipping it up, which required both hands to be off the bars. Fortunately, when it came to the relay they let us stop at the other end of the course to zip it up if we couldn't do it in time. The last skill was super fun, because it was the team bump. Each group of four rode right next together really slowly and practiced riding so close together that we were bumping shoulders and handlebars. Once again, during the relay we weren't super fast, but we did finish eventually.
For extra credit, we tried a massive team bump. Initially we tried with 20 people bumping, but that didn't work so well because we didn't start well and couldn't stay next together. We spent a while practicing with smaller groups where we started with four stable riders in the middle, then added on a person on each side until we had a bunch. That was pretty fun. Then we also tried the four person team bump on a small figure 8 course, so it was tricky to keep the people on the inside and the outside of the turns together. Some people also tried an extra challenge, which was to put on and take off leg warmers while riding around. A couple of people actually managed it.
Then, we got to jump in the pool for a bit before dinner. The lesson there was how to tuck and roll, which is useful when you're falling off your bike and don't want to break a collarbone. We practiced it by jumping into the pool and rolling. Mostly we just played around though and relaxed. By that time, I was starving, so when we headed back I went straight to the shower and hurried to the dining hall for a large dinner.
After dinner, we had more "cycling school", this time in the form of a talk from our mechanic, Steven. He talked about some basic bike maintenance, explained why it's good to keep your bike clean (less wear, looks good, good time to inspect for wear or damage), and also talked a bit about components. He pointed out that using flashy, rarer components tends to be a bad idea, since neutral support is almost always Shimano, and if you break something that's a hard to find part at a race, there's almost no chance that you'll find it a the local bike shop. He also recommended that we have separate training and race bikes so that the race bike can be kept cleaned and tuned, so if something breaks on a training ride, you still have a bike for the race.
We then had free time until we decided to go to bed. This meant that the boys were loud and rowdy and I settled down to a nice book before bed. Anyway, it was definitely a fun day.
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