The Colavita gals headed down to the sun and warmth in Tucson March 6-17th, 2014, for some bonding, training, and racing! People sometimes ask how can teams race so well together but live so far apart… well, these camps serve as a great opportunity to spend a lot of time together on and off the bike! In attendance were Erica Allar, Lindsey Bayer, Olivia Dillon, Whitney Schultz, and Mary Zider. WIth so many new people this year, it was nice we had extra bonding time with this camp! Here are some of the highlights of training camp:
Friday, March 7th, 2014: after pre-riding the circuit race course for Day 3 of the Tucson Bicycle Classic (March 14-16th) we checked out the crit course for the Old Pueblo Grand Prix (March 8th), followed by a ride with the El Grupo gals. El Grupo is a great club in Tucson geared for getting juniors on bikes! We loved how they had so many gals too. We enjoyed a bit of skills practice with them and followed up with a Q&A session. Some raced with us at the Old Pueblo Grand Prix- good job gals!
Saturday, March 8th we had our first race! This crit was was a solid L shape with a few narrow roads and some pretty quality wind for so late in the evening! About 40 women started the race with Optum p/b Kelly Benefits being the other squad in attendance with large numbers. They launched attack after attack until Lauren Hall got away and stayed away for the win. A large group broke off the main field with quite a few of the Optum ladies, plus Olivia, Erica, Mary, and Whitney, and a few other ladies. It was a very active race and the we clicked quickly and were able to help deliver Erica for the field sprint win for second.
Whatever you do, don’t ask about the tiny chairs
Sunday the Colavita women participated in the Grand FUNdo, a fun community group ride to bring the racers from the night before and community members together. After downing some delicious coffee at Stella Java, we were ready to roll. We rode a nice 40 miles on the extensive bike path system. Thanks for having us Grand FUNdo!
That afternoon we checked out and analyzed the very roller coaster-like time trial course for the Tucson Bicycle Classic. Many people go into any time trial with the same tactic: go as hard as possible...but sometimes, especially on courses like this where there are rollers and a few significant kickers, it’s better to choose your battles and rest in other areas in order to have an overall faster time.
Monday, after an extensive photo shoot with Jonathan Devich at Canyon Ranch, we rode up Mount Lemmon. The climb was amazing: a consistent and decent grade. The quality training going up was only doubled by the awesome tactical training then descending the 25 miles to the base! Tuesday was much of the same, minus the photo shoot!
Wednesday we checked out the road race course for Tucson Bicycle Classic which had some big rollers, a long gradual decent, and a long windy false flat section. It was easy to see the course could dramatically change based on the wind situation on race day!
The Tucson Bicycle Classic kicked off at high noon Friday with a big head wind! Our awesome staff- Alex our mechanic and Jame our director- had rigged our road set ups to be as aero as possible. We did the best we could and Olivia finished 9th, the first road bike finisher and everyone else piled in just behind her. Shortly after we experienced a very rare Tucson rain. I hear it’s a thing of fairy tales.
Saturday had a 6:43AM start. Yep, you heard that right. So much for not needing warmers for Tucson. Shortly after sunrise we were off. Optum was full assault after the first lap and they were the better team on the day. Sunday was similar but we had learned our lessons from the day before and operated more cohesively.
Overall we had a great camp in Tucson logging over 21 hours on the bike, lots of quality time getting to know each other, and meshing together on the bike. Although the results may not show it, we did accomplish a lot of what we set out to do with the team camp. It’s only upwards from here! A huge thanks to all our sponsors- Colavita, Fine Cooking, Stradalli, Selle Italia, Clif Bar, Rudy Project, Castelli, Bont, Headsweats, Vittoria, Speedplay, Blindfold Magazine, Patagonia, and Park Tool. Our staff and friends really made our camp smooth and fantastic- thanks Jame Carney, Amanda Rose Shission, Alex Strickland, Tom, and Pam. 
