Hello FLCC-ers and MiM ladies,
I just got back around 3:30 this morning from the USAC Women's
Development Camp at DeSales University, where I've spent the last
week. I received an email invitation just a few weeks ago from USA
Cycling and thanks to the generosity of the FLCC, the Mission in
Motion team, and Glenn Swan, I suddenly found myself taking advantage
of one of the most informative, fun, and inspirational cycling
experiences I've ever had.
I feel like my head is still spinning from everything I've been taking
in, whether it was in the early morning cross-training sessions, the
training rides, the skills practices, the introduction to track
cycling, the evening presentations, or just the conversations held
over meals in the dining hall. It will probably take quite a while to
digest everything. I took tons of notes! which I will share as I get
them typed up, and a few photos as well.
I made some new friends, and already miss my fellow campers (though
the flurry of Facebook friendings and photo postings/taggings has
already begun). However I will get to see four new acquaintances
from the Verducci-Breakaway pro team at the Chris Thater soon: three
of the team riders and the director sportif-really neat people who
generously spent a lot of time with us, riding along both on the road
and on the track, and joining us for meals and discussions. In
addition to the Verducci riders, we were joined by several other
amazing riders, who I'll talk more about later.
Our coaches-Ray Ignosh, Kristen Dieffenbach, and Kurt Begemann- were
wonderful, they kept us quite busy but I didn't hear too many
complaints. Our camp was quite small (six women) and because of that
we didn't have a dedicated soigneur to help fill bottles and do other
ride prep, so our schedule was a little tighter and I didn't have
time to keep up email correspondence, seeing as I had too much to do
in the "free" time. But over the next week or so I will be typing up
and sending my notes from each day as I can.
Ray also said to say hi to Steve Frattini and Brian Lawney, Cornell's
dynamic tandem track duo...

Stay tuned for more!
Vanessa