I had designed a 4 day Training Camp to run over the Chinese New Year holidays that was about 160km each day with thousands of meters of climbing. In short, I had planned routes that would have destroyed me.
But it's a training camp. That's what I wanted to do. Also, we have one rider who will ride the Tour de Taiwan in a few weeks so he needed some more big climbing.
The weather had other plans.
Those included temps that were 10 degrees below normal, big winds and heavy rain. If it were summer time it would have been no problem and we would have ridden through it. And honestly, it wasn't that cold...at sea level. I wanted to take the guys above 2000m as many times as I could in 4 days. This was a whole different kettle of fish.
Then I heard that there were problems with some of the roads. OK. Plan B.
We canceled the first 2 days and then piled in the team cars and headed south where there was less rain.
Day 1 was a flat windy, rainy ride at race pace for 4 1/2 hour where we headed south and then turned around and rode home. Luckily it was dry for the way back.I could sure feel how poor my fitness is. I had a neck injury that kept me off the bike for more than 2 months and now I am over weight and well behind where I need to be for my first "A" race in May. But enough of this.
The second day we did some climbing and the weather was finally on our side. It was beautiful. We had a good 45 mins of flat roads to warm up and then we hit the first of 5 climbs on the day. This one only went up about 1000m but there were several long pitches in double digits.
We had a few former team members (locals) join us for the ride so we were 8 riders in all. I just didn't want to be the 8th guy over the top. I managed to keep a couple guys in sight (with 2 more behind me) until the last km. Then I just had to spin it up and over.
We waited at the top and then rode back down and onto the 2nd and 3rd climbs. We encountered some road closures due to rock slides and I think we were all pretty happy that we had changed to plan B as we would have most likely be caught out somewhere at altitude, in the rain.This was our first camp together and we managed to eek out almost 10 hours of training under nasty conditions. The guys seem to be gelling as a group and there are certainly no personality conflicts.
I few races together and this could turn into a pretty good team. I'm certainly looking forward to the season and I hope I can drop the weight and find some bloody fitness soon.
