Thoughts after the Meeting

My mind was buzzing last night as some of us congregated at Chicora Alley. We will get minutes out soon. I would really encourage you to use the balance wheel in terms of your cycling capabilities. Put each element on one of the spokes. Be detailed. Instead of skills, give each skill needed to race, a spoke. Rate yourself......more importantly, get one or more of your team mates to rate you or look at the wheel with you. Remember, their perspective is often more accurate than yours. Unless you are currently a Tour rider, you will very likely have some flat spots in your wheel.

It is these flat spots that must be addressed for you to improve. Most folks want to work on the stuff at which they are already good. Champions train their limiters.

Two things came up last night that are heard very often:

* I am not a sprinter

* I am not a time trialer

Here's the truth. There are only two ways to win a race or even get on the podium. One is sprinting and the other is in a break away. If you get in a break, it usually requires sprinting to establish it and you must time trial to sustain it....either individually or in a multi person basis.

So if you can't do either, you might just as well go home! Or, hopefully practice these skills. We talked about clinics and embedding practice of these on TEAM training rides. It is imperative that we learn these skills.

After being in business several years I found that most people claim they have, let's say 20 years of experience. Really, they have 1 year of experience 20 times.

We are entering our second year. Our opportunities are to build on the tremendous success we had this year......in racing, 116 top finishes. This doesn't even count all the other great things we accomplished.

Let's make sure that in 2011, we create our second year of experience vs. repeating 2010!

We planted the seeds last night for great year.......see you on the podium.