Are we at training camp?
Our riders arrived Saturday because we had a photo shoot with Men’s Health magazine (I think) Monday morning (yesterday). They wanted to do a story on teamwork or something like that. So they took a couple of riding shots but mostly they took photos of the guys in casual clothing. And not team clothing either but rather sort of like a GAP photo shoot.
It was kind of cool to hang out and see the guys in street clothing and almost out of their element. The photos were in and around our hotel with the team cars and the team truck as background. Pretty cool. You will have to look for it on the news stands.
But the guys are racers by trade so they have to focus on that too. So yesterday they did a 3 hour training ride as Johan followed with Juan (mechanic) and a host of spare equipment. Today it was almost the same but no Johan as he had a couple of interviews to do. So, Juan and I drove behind the guys as they trained a little. They have to because they may “Shut down” if they don’t constantly ride. If you asked riders in the big 3 week stage races (Tour de France, Giro D’Italia and Vuelta a Espania) they generally don’t like rest days as it requires them to go training that day in order to not shut down.
So, the riders are here two solid days before we start racing and we have two solid training days in. And it requires full support. Are we at training camp? It seems like it with what we’ve been doing yesterday and today.