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The Victory Brewing team(Image credit: Anthony Gongora)

Tales from the Peloton, February 7, 2006

Based in Downingtown, PA, Victory Brewing women's professional team is part of an American phenomenon - links their to main sponsor run deep and the team becomes a part of the company's culture and appeal. And that isn't such a bad thing when your sponsor is a niche brewing company - nice! Recently the team trained around Asheville, North Carolina, where there was plenty of team bonding on and off the bike, plus some sampling of the sponsor's product - here is that training camp in the riders' words.

This morning we were up bright and early to knock out the rider portraits. We hiked in the cold to a remote location to stand in front of the perfect fir tree. When I say we hiked to a remote location, I meant we actually walked 50 yards from our warm cars in the Food Lion parking lot. At the risk of having Oprah yell at me for an embellished memoir, I wanted to clarify that slight exaggeration of the truth. Our wonderful photographer Tony did his best to make us look our best (endless job) as we smiled in all our favorite Victory Brewing outfits. We hurried home from the photo shoot to get ready for our team ride.

Today's ride was scheduled to be 3-3.5 hrs with a chance to "open up" our legs. Within minutes of leaving the house we were climbing up Town Mountain. enjoying an ever-improving view of Asheville as out talkative group made its way up. After stopping to meet a local paper's photographer and adding a couple layers of clothing, we began a fun, fast descent down the Blue Ridge Parkway. As we were flying down the chilly descent, I realized I've never worn that many matching layers in my entire cycling career. If you had seen our blue Victory train flying down the road, you'd agree we looked so pro.

After exiting the parkway, we divided our group of 11 into two and began doing some echelon work on the rolling pavement of Hwy. 70. After about 10 minutes of this, I began wondering what that strange burning sensation in my legs was. The off/early season can be fairly deceiving. After doing hours and hours of rides in warm, sunny weather and having so much fun on the bike cruising around to get a solid aerobic base, it is easy to think that this whole bike racing thing is a piece of cake. There's nothing like a solid 20-25 minute effort followed very closely by a 15 minute climb to remind you that training and racing at the level which we all strive for is far from easy. After that quick reintroduction to Mr. Reality, I am proud to report that Mr. Fun is still around and serving as the main motivation for this whole team.

We made it home and shortly after our arrival 30 lbs. of chips, burritos and salsa were delivered for our quick consumption. Nic Sims, one of Specialized's finest, has been on hand here at camp to help us get our Ruby Pro's and some of the other Specialized equipment set up. He gave us a quick run down of how to properly pack and unpack our bikes to save hours of preventable headaches this summer as we bounce all over the country with our bikes in tow.

After a unanimous vote last night, we pushed today's 4.5-hour ride to start at 10 am. I'm now part of the laptop club which had yet another meeting this morning over breakfast. After rolling about for an hour and a half, we hit the first climb of the day on Route 151 up to the Blue Ridge Parkway. It took about 35 minutes of serious climbing to ascend to the gates. The Parkway is a beautiful highway that runs from Front Royal, VA to Cherokee, NC through the Shenandoah National Park. But what would a scenic tour down The Parkway be without a 30-second dark tunnel and a run-in with a Park Ranger. Mike, our director with an eye on everything, knew to pull over before the Ranger used his megaphone. We were told to ride single file until the end of The Parkway. The second hill of the day started out gradual and ended with a steep switchback which cracked a few of us. After that we regrouped and headed straight home for lasagne and 'Sex in the City'.

Mike has slowly been introducing the new girls to our team talks. Yesterday's lasted almost two hours and covered topics like "What it means to be a Professional Athlete", "Dodge ball on the Mellowdrome", "If you don't label your clothes, they belong to Mike", and "Rules of the Van". Joe from Cane Creek hosted a dinner party complete with Victory's Dark Lager and a special edition Prima Pils. After dinner there was a Bluegrass pickup with toe tapping and singing. We got a chance to catch up with some old friends and make some new ones - it definitely helped us forget the tough ride earlier.

Our day started with an early morning photo shoot at the Grove Park Inn. You don't even want to know how much it costs to spend a night in this palace. Mike is at full schmooze capacity and even had the owner of the hotel clear an area around the grand fireplace for our pictures. By the way, evidently BIG HAIR is hot. So for all you ladies out there who are fixing your hair in the morning the keys are curling irons and spray! Oh and don't forget the extra application of lip-gloss.extra glossy.

It was a great and beautiful day in lovely Asheville, North Carolina that started at the crack of dawn. Well, 9am...the ride ended up being a four and a half hour ride through the mountains of Asheville all the way north to a little, sweet town called Hot Springs, where yes, there are actually real hot springs. Hmm...why we didn't stop to sit in them and soak was beyond me. I guess I was the only one that packed my bathing suit.

The ride started in a thick blanket of heavy fog. We all had anticipated a day in the 60's so some of us dressed a little too light and shivered for about an hour until the sun came out. It was quite disturbing to see how much Tara was shaking, yet funny at the same time. The ride consisted of six climbs so needless to say today was definitely the day for the climbers of the bunch - Kirsten, Leigh, Lauren and Chrissy were flying up the climbs. Those of us stuck behind shared in some laughs...Laura Yoisten had her smarty-pants on with a great joke. "What kind of shoes do detectives wears?".Punch line."Sneakers!" I didn't say it was a good joke. Also, it was brought to my attention that I looked like I was wearing cowboy boots riding today, which obviously I was not - they were my winter booties with knee warmers. Well, add in short legs. I'm starting a new fashion statement.

After the ride we headed to get some great Greek food where for the first time this week we lacked live cultural music and dance moves. Oh well, we still had great food and figured out Chrissy really enjoys pepperoncinis and the Canadians enjoyed some southern sweet tea. Although the day wasn't complete without a trip to Old Europe in down town where you can get coffee and the most amazing desserts. I believe that's all for now, so thank you for reading - but one more thing before I depart. Shout out of the day from the Victory women's team goes to Tom Boonen!

As Mike and Jamie did double duty loading the van with our road bikes and prepping our time trial bikes for a test ride, we got ready for another trip to the Mellowdrome. Once there we spent about 45 minutes tweaking - "can you raise my saddle just a touch Mike...no, actually lower it...and my bars...can you tilt them down...perfect". The chill in the air and the fatigue in the legs made the decision to shorten the ride today much easier. That afternoon we decompressed with non-stop episodes of Sex and the City and then got ready for a fun-filled night at Barley's Pub and Pizzeria.