Team Mini Camp

After spending Thursday and Friday with the Peterson's in kalamazoo, I was picked up Friday evening by Dan lam. We were then met at his house by the rest of the team from Michigan. We put all the bikes in the car and started our drive up to Indy! We arrived late that night. We 4 of us stayed at one persons house and the others stayed at someone else's house. It workout out pretty well! The next morning we were up and ready to rumble, we started the day at this wonderful breakfast shop that made the best breakfast sandwiches! After Breakfast we headed back to our host's house, Jason Fowler (Sram Rep) and hung out for a bit until we had to go to the Zipp factory for our team meeting. We watched some of this years Tour De France before heading over. Let me just start off by saying they have this place pretty well hidden. It was huge though and so cool! We walked in and the stairs had wheels built into them and the door handles were crank arms, we went into this big conference room and slowly the rest of the Indy team came in too... it was great to finally meet the whole team, I had known most of them from racing but not on a personal level... this was a chance to really get to know them! The meeting lasted a little bit over an hour, we got to see one of the team bikes built up which was sweet! We also went over a tentative race schedule, rules, dos and donts and rider contracts and sponsors. After the meeting we had a tour of the Zipp factory which was uber cool! After the tour we all got dressed for the adventure race...

The temperature was just under 30 degrees, we arrived in the middle of this park with no one but our team and these two guides. Declan, our manager split us up into 5 teams. Our goal was to get to the 15 waypoints that were planted throughout the woods. Each one was worth a certain amount of points and some were easier to find then others, we had a map with the waypoints plotted on the map as well as a compass. The gun was off and the race was on we all sprinted toward a waypoint, every team with a different strategy. The time limit was 90 minutes. My team was me, Mac Brennan, Nate Williams and Josh. We had a good plan that should work, Mac was really good with the map and Nate worked the compass, I would run to the checkpoints to stamp our paper. Checkpoint 15 was across the lake onto the peninsula, Nate and Josh paddled across while Nate and I examined the map and our strategy. We ran all the time, we got back and we had won! Partay! We did the course in 52 minutes. We most likely ran about 5-6 miles... needless to say many cyclists were going to be sore in the morning! After all of the teams were finished we headed over to a Mexican restaurant and had dinner. After dinner it was back to Jasons house for some showers and chilling. After that we went out to a restaurant called Brugge! They had some amazing Frites! After that it was back to bed for an early morning ride the next day!

Sunday started with a quick breakfast before getting ready for a 2-3 hour ride. We ended up riding only about 2 hours but it was great to get to know some of my teammates from the Indy side! Now us Michigan boys are on our way home... I am so stoked for this season!