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April 7, 2008
Loon State Camp Recap
245 Miles, 7,587 Calories, 16.5 hours in the saddle, 1,225 Max Watts, and 52 MPH max speed. That pretty much sums up the camp from a cycling perspective. In addition, awesome meals were consumed, lots of laughs were had, and the weather was great for April in Minnesota.
On Friday, I got in 93 miles and was feeling great. We tackled some tough climbs and battled some decent head wind. On the way home, we took the Root River Trail for about 26 miles directly into the wind. There were six of us heading home and we kept the pace moderate to keep the work effort in check. After going out too hard on Thursday I worked hard to conserve my energy to get in more miles.
Saturday I had intended to use the same plan, conserve energy pull in lots of miles. The weather was great, we had 26 Loons at camp, but the wind was pretty nasty. I kept things relatively conservative on the climbs, but expended a lot of energy on the rolling, windy sections and for a few sprints. The best spring we lined up 5 guys to lead out a train to surprise Cullen who had been taking all the sprints all week long. I led out with Cleary, Frye, Bryan, and Chris in tow. We jumped with probably a mile to go. My goal was to get us to a corner, leaving the remaining guys about 500 yards to go. As I pulled off, I could see that a few of the other Loons had been able to jump into the sprint. At the end it was a draw between Frye and Dave. I felt good on my effort and learned I had probably gone out too fast, too hard leaving a few of the guys in the original train struggling to keep up. I felt like I was controlling my ramp up, but obviously made some errors. If we practiced this, we could be unstoppable in races.
Sunday morning I headed out for an easy ride for recovery on my own and then started the trek home. I had a great time and completely loved every minute on the bike and all the time getting to know my team mates better.
Posted by kermisch at April 7, 2008 10:30 PM