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The three musketeers packed their bikes and set off for another spectacular Winter Training Camp (WTC) in Tucson, AZ. In this year’s edition, the team shared Daniel’s house in Oro Valley with two pro triathletes, Marc and Gabi, making for excellent company and great mentors on life as an athlete. Our goals for this camp were to make new friends while riding bikes, to eat well and build up our base miles without overuse injuries, and to race a time trial on our last day.
The scenery of the Sonoran desert with its rugged rocks, Saguaro cacti and speedy road runners was a welcome relief from the winter storm on the East Coast. The best way to see it was to warm up our legs on an easy spin out to Gates Pass by setting out on the Loop bike path. It was Sparrow’s first time riding his new road bike and when we crossed the first road he forgot to unclip his pedal and fell immediately, sending his Di2 drivetrain into crash mode. As all three of us MIT PhD students were stopped at the side of the road to diagnose the electronic issue, we asked ChatGPT for repair instructions before eventually figuring out that unplugging the derailleur and plugging it back in would get Sparrow bike to work again. We continued to ride three climbs of increasing difficulty to help us adjust to riding outdoors and practice our descending. As we stopped for a photo, we also spotted the gang of Quinn Simmons, wearing his national champion jersey, on a post-Shootout cooldown ride. We rode home starstruck and planned our upcoming ascent of Mt. Lemmon after recovering with a big chicken stew.
On day 2, we drove to Le Buzz cafe for our ride up Mt Lemmon. The weather at the summit had been snowy for a few days and at the base we were stopped by a sheriff who told us to turn around after 5 miles. Lorenzo led the climb and decided to stop after 14 miles at Windy Point Vista, when he could see snow a few miles up the road. After a few minutes, he got cold, put on all his jackets and rode down to find the rest of the team. A mile down the road, Martin asked “did you go all the way to the top?” and Lorenzo, still hypoxic, replied while descending “Yeah, just around the corner.” Martin, only hearing Lorenzo say “Yeah” as he zipped by, thought “Man, I’m really out of shape if Lorenzo had all the time to make it to the top and back.” Half a mile down the road, Lorenzo realized the miscommunication and stopped to call Martin. Having no reception, Lorenzo had no choice but to chase Martin up the climb, having already given him a mile headstart. Sparrow, who hadn’t yet been spotted, was dreaming of the cookie cabin waiting atop the mountain as he climbed to join his teammates.
Desperation set in when Lorenzo returned to the Windy Point Vista without Martin yet in sight. Three miles later, with snow on the shoulder, he caught up to Martin and turned around, rejoining Sparrow. As the descent began, Martin and Sparrow took off, thinking about the LeBuzz cookie and not having to pedal. Lorenzo started to shiver so badly he couldn’t steer his bike and needed to stop every 100 m to warm up. Meanwhile, towards the base of the climb, Martin was brushed against by a car and crashed, with some serious road rash. To our surprise, Martin’s Di2 hadn’t gone into crash mode. Still full of adrenaline, Martin hopped right back onto the bike without noticing the multiple cracks in his carbon frame. After about a mile or so of riding, his legs started to cramp and the extent of the damage sunk in when he got off and inspected the bike.
We rejoined at LeBuzz, where Martin needed to inhale a pastry and coffee before addressing his multiple open wounds. The entire screen of his bike computer fell off, but at least the ride was saved and uploaded to Strava. Eventually, we went to the urgent care so Martin could get his injuries taken care of, including a scary swelling bruise. Already, it was clear what everyone’s rose, bud and thorn would be later, and thankfully the dinner of chicken stew and baked sausage was already prepared. Martin had a restless night between the road rash and scheming to commit insurance fraud for a new frame.
After the extreme events of the previous day, it was clear that a recovery day was needed. While Martin stayed off the bike to watch the bruise, Sparrow and Lorenzo, looking splendid in his Belgian kit, went along the Loop to Savaya, the nearest coffee shop with the best views of Mt Lemmon. While enjoying their cup o’ Joe, they saw a roadrunner snacking on meatballs from the coffee shop. Later, they went shopping at an international market with multiple aisles for each cuisine, over 20 in total, adding a lot of steps to our recovery day. While Lorenzo made a lentil stew from the leftovers, Marc “the shark” shared stories about how to race and get sponsored as a pro triathlete.
On day four, Martin was determined to ride and after he bandaged himself better than Tadej Pogacar we set out for a long ride on the Loop where there wouldn’t be any dangerous car traffic. Daniel, our host, made everyone’s day by letting Martin ride his steel 1x bike, formerly owned by Ashton Lambie, Individual Pursuit world champ. On the long, flat stretches of bike path we practiced how to ride in a paceline efficiently en route to the Mercado San Agustin. Afterwards, Sparrow, having just completed the longest ride of his life, sprang into action as chef, cooking a succulent fried beef dish with the best chili oil (aka, rocket fuel) and a pork shoulder stew for the days to come.
Martin planned a route for the next day around Saguaro national park and Colossal Cave. On the way, he stopped at Fairwheel bikes, where the kind folks set him up with a rental bike. At Saguaro NP, the park loop decorated with cacti was so beautiful that all the tourists driving their cars were stopped in the middle of the road. On one such pause, Lorenzo noticed that his shifter cable had snapped and found himself doing torque intervals on his simplified 2-speed bike. We continued our leisurely tour of the park and at last made our way towards Colossal Cave. The slight uphill grade was complemented by a colossal headwind, requiring a concerted push to cover the distance. On the return, we flew downhill with the tailwind, reaping the rewards of our labor. Towards the end, Lorenzo’s rear tire went flat, finally rendering his 2-speed bike useless, as karma had caught up with him for lording the simplicity of his mechanical bike over his teammates electronic drivetrains flawed due to the crash mode anti-feature (false positive for Sparrow and false negative for Martin). On the way home, we tried out some local tamales that would have tasted better with some homemade chili oil.
Daniel’s arrival had been delayed a day due to a snowstorm on the East Coast. When he arrived that afternoon, he complained his back hurt from shoveling snow all day on his driveway. He needed to stretch his legs and went for a spin with Lorenzo to catch the sunset. Back at the house, we feasted on pork stew and were joined by Gabi and Marc. At some point Marc commented that Lorenzo had been rocking his bib shorts all day, to which Lorenzo replied, “when was the last time you trained for a 12 hour ride?” Practice makes perfect.
With the recovery day completed, we were excited about the upcoming ITT and drove out to the mining town of San Manuel to recon the super-fast course. We flew along the downhill stretch to practice a TTT paceline and at the 9 mile turnaround, we stopped to regroup and saw that both Martin and Sparrow had punctures. Sparrow’s sealed, however it took us three MIT students 10 minutes to convince Daniel to stop Martin’s puncture with 2 plugs. Feeling very accomplished, we took a group photo with the festive cacti in the background.
The ride continued with a long false flat followed by a climb up the far side of Mt Lemmon that led to the zipline adventure park. We were sure to stock up on glycogen and refueled with burgers, chicken tenders, and fries at the restaurant. The scenery of the Sonoran desert was truly stunning and thankfully was enjoyed with minimal interruption from cars.
Back at the house, the team joined Marc and Gabi for a barbecue with their triathlete friends. The group traded training stories and placed bets on the winning times for the Saturday ITT.The plan for day 7 was to taper for race day and get a decent recovery ride. We rode out on the Loop to a coffee shop when Sparrow got a message from his advisor requesting that he go to the U of A to meet with research collaborators. While Sparrow rode to the campus and gave a chalk talk in cycling kit, Martin, Lorenzo and Daniel rode back to Oro Valley and watched some Polish TV shows on an old LCD. It soon became clear that a better TV was necessary for the house so Daniel went to Best Buy to embarrass Martin with Polish humor in front of the employees. A few hours later, we procured a TV and fit it into the minivan together with Sparrow’s bike and all the cyclists.
On our last day, we got ready to race the time trial in San Manuel and calmed our nerves by stress-eating costco gummy bears. We all set out around the same time and rode quickly to get the fastest time on the course and get a solid FTP estimate. While the three musketeers swept the podium of the collegiate C race, Daniel took the win in the masters category. Martin and Sparrow felt extremely dehydrated, and bartered their only remaining gummy bears for two cans of red bull from the race organizer. All in all it was a great success and a fun way to wrap up camp.
On the following day, still gleaming from our podium sweep, we all watched MVDP ride away with his 7th cyclocross world champs on the beautiful new TV before backing our bags and flying home from Phoenix. WTC was a huge success despite the difficulties that came our way and managed to do good training while growing as a team. Everyone finished WTC feeling stronger and excited about the upcoming riding season!
Finally, we owe a huge thank you to Jeff for driving the team home all of these years!
