Camp was pretty awesome. There was the part where I got violently ill with what later turned out to be norovirus (that crap that takes out entire cruise ships), but other than that, it was great! I didn’t do much writing on here while I was there, partially because I was busy and partially because I was busy being sick and lethargic, but I’ll try to make up for it with a recap now.

The Place
Borrego Springs is a small town (population 3,500) in the desert. In the entire time I was there, I did not go to a single store or restaurant, so I don’t have much to report on the town. Burritos from Carmelita’s were delivered for lunch one day and were quite tasty, so score one for Borrego dining. On the other hand, when I called the owner of one of our rental houses to report a problem and mentioned that I had food poisoning, he immediately asked, “Was it from [restaurant whose name I can’t remember]?” So, uh, yeah, don’t eat there.

Our team stayed in two houses for the duration of our visit. One was home base and housed the staff, the trailer, and all of the gear. The other house held most of the riders (myself included), but was only used for part of the time. The rest of the time we stayed at the main place or the overflow house two blocks away. Wildlife encountered in the houses included a tarantula, a scorpion, and a huge cricket (the latter I saw immediately upon awakening at 6am one day and tried to kill by repeatedly whacking with a shoe, much to the dismay of my roommate who sleepily asked, “What are you DOING?!?“)

Since 50% of our group ended up with norovirus, I’m thinking future guests of those houses are in for a rough visit.

The Girls
I can’t say enough good things about my teammates – they are all strong, accomplished, experienced riders who are happy to share their kale, oatmeal, and good humor. Nobody stood out as high-maintenance or diva-esque. (Uh oh, what’s that expression about how if you can’t find the asshole in the group, it’s probably you?) Everybody pulled their weight around the house and on rides and I felt lucky to be part of such a classy, cool-headed group. You can read more about each of them here (and see how I looked squinting into the sun the morning after I puked out my soul). I almost wish for the sake of good blogging that there had been some crazy outlier in the bunch, but alas, the most demanding thing all week was the whiny chick who barfed, cried, and had to go to the ER. If training camp is any indicator, it’s going to be a good season for Team Colavita.

The Staff
Iona (director), Dan (manager), Ronnie (soigneur), Jordan (mechanic), and Fabian (mechanic) were the glue that held everything together. From all of the pre-camp prep work to taking care of us and our equipment all week to making sure everybody and all of their stuff successfully left Borrego Springs, they tirelessly covered it all. This sounds like some adoring ode to this group, but that’s because it is. Having staff enables riders to focus entirely on our jobs – riding, recovering, and getting ready to ride again. This was only camp, but I can already see how the staff will make my life so much easier and less stressful this season. That makes them worth their weight in platinum and I look forward to rewarding them at the end of the year with huge baskets of Colavita products.

The Gear
It was like Christmas morning when I was handed my new gear. Kits, accessories, bags, glasses, shoes, a helmet, a puppy – piles of awesomeness from Castelli, Rudy Project, Bont, Speedplay, and Headsweats. I was worried beforehand about having to spend a season riding/living in gear that wasn’t a good fit, but so far nothing has been anything but comfortable and high quality. I’m even digging neon yellow, which is a change from my typical palette of black accented with more black. Once we all tried on our kits and set up our gear, it was time to get situated on our Jamis bikes and acclimate to using Shimano Di2. I still accidentally shift the wrong direction on occasion (and based on the various profanities coming from the group during critical down/up shift points on rides, I’m not alone), but that will just take time and it’s cool to have flawless shifting that always works under pressure. Once the team got out on the road in our matching everything, it sank in – I’m on a pro team. WEIRD. SO COOL.

Some of you have asked how the bike situation works: I’ll have a bike at home for training and both a race bike and a TT bike in the team trailer. For big events, the trailer will be there and I’ll use my race bike. For smaller events or one-day races far from where the trailer is parked at the time, I’ll take my training bike.

The Rides
Borrego Springs is a desert situated among mountains, so the riding is either flat and open or noticeable climbing up into the hills. There is also a lot of wind, so much so at times that I am confident that Team Colavita is now prepared to ride directly through a tornado without breaking formation. The team rode each day for at least a few hours, with the other sick riders and I sitting out or taking shorter routes as needed. It sucked to miss some of the bigger trips, but I still got to see amazing scenery and spend quality time rolling around with my new teammates.

There was one day where we did an 11-mile descent down a mountain where I learned that one does not descend smoothly while (a) looking into the distance beyond every hairpin turn to see just how insanely far below the valley floor is, (b) reading every DANGER: STEEP GRADE sign, (c) staring fixedly at every car zooming head-on around curves, and (d) panicking, tensing up, and braking aggressively. The team car filled with the director, the mechanic, and several teammates was also coasting down the mountain behind me watching this debacle, which was great because I was really putting my best foot forward. Needless to say, I’m donning my body armor and doing repeats down Mt. Weather in coming days.

The Plague
Ohhhhhhhhhh. There is so much horror to share about this, so many disgusting and yet blog-able moments. The illness struck on Tuesday afternoon and by the evening, I was wrecked. The team was going into town for dinner with the founders of Speedplay, so I at least had the house to myself while launching a nuclear assault on the bathroom. It was miserable and I wanted to die, but I think the highlight might have been when the toilet in the bathroom I shared with another rider stopped working. STOPPED WORKING. It had been finicky in the preceeding days, but  when it decided to stop flushing while my body was in WHOA: FLUSH EVERYTHING OUT mode, it was almost funny. Almost. In between fits of extreme illness, I had to find the homeowner’s phone number, call him, and inquire as to the whereabouts of a plunger. Once I found it (and hurled a few more times), I set about aggressively trying to plunge the toilet. If I wasn’t so preoccupied with wanting to die, I would have been laughing at the absurdity and horror of it all.

When that failed, I had to call the guy back and ask for help. While we were on the phone (and since I had not yet mentioned that I was in the throes of Ebola), he politely asked how my trip was going. I replied that I had a ‘touch’ of food poisoning, but did not mention that I was also curled up in the fetal position on the gross, freezing bathroom floor while using a pile of dirty laundry as a pillow. He expressed concern and then called the local maintenance man, who showed up less than 15 minutes later (to find me still in the fetal position, but now in a bathroom with functional plumbing). After this nice gentleman fixed the toilet, he came to see if I was okay (NO! SO NOT OKAY!) and I told him I was not feeling so great. I later realized that there was dried vomit stuck to my chest throughout this interaction. He wished me well and left, but found out later from the team that he went into town to find them and tell them that I wasn’t looking so good.

After he left, I had one of those awesome moments where I needed to avail myself of the services of both the toilet and the trash can simultaneously. I can’t recall a higher point in my life in the past few years. By then, I knew the team would be finished at dinner soon and didn’t want them coming home to a scene from The Hot Zone, so between bouts of being sick, I frantically cleaned, took out the trash, showered off the filth, and put on clean clothes. Then I climbed into bed – by that point absolutely devoid of ANY substance left to hurl out of my body – and waited to go into the light.

Instead, an ambulance came and took me to the ER over an hour away because my abdominal pain was so bad we all thought alien was trying to come out. While I was at the hospital being diagnosed with “overexertion” because the staff there couldn’t believe a person could live through the GRUELING 65-mile moderate-paced ride the team had done earlier, several more at home started down the same path of digestive pyrotechnics.

In the days that followed, we assumed it was food poisoning and suspected the source was the spinach we’d all been inhaling. The spinach went into the trash, nobody went near leafy vegetables for a few days, and we all overcooked and overwashed any food. Then, when several of us (myself included) were very slow to recover, Team Virus formed – the group who believed we’d had a virus and not a bacterial issue. Turns out Team Virus was right; a visit to the doctor’s office upon arriving home returned a verdict of norovirus, described as being ‘violently contagious’.

When I told my friend about this diagnosis, his reply was: “i thought that when a group of girls got together they had lots of slow-motion pillow fights in their pajamas, but i guess you could also share viruses as well.

It would seem that way, as people were still reporting new cases of the illness even after camp ended. I’m finally starting to feel better, but it was a looooong overnight of travel to get home while grappling with the residual affects of a serious GI tract affliction. I always wondered what kind of evil person passes gas on an airplane, but now I know firsthand. It was either explode from the mounting pressure or hide behind my Jet Blue-provided eye mask, pray that my seatmates were actually asleep, and then silently decompress while cringing in shame. Sometimes I would raise the eye mask, wrinkle my nose disdainfully, and look around quizzically as if to discern the source of any potential odor. Because you gotta cover your tracks, you know?

The Rest Of It
So that was camp. It’s good to be home and recovering in the comfort of my own space and routines, but I miss the excitement of being surrounded by the team and fully immersed in the world of competitive cycling. I won’t have to miss it for long, though. I’m joining the team to race the Delray Beach Twilight Crit on March 23 and then Redlands Bicycle Classic from April 4-7. Hooray for Team Virus Colavita!