Junior National Madison Camp, Colorado Springs, CO – Day 1 and 2

A handful of cyclists in the Olympic Rings


Labor Day Weekend Hot Air Ballon festival just outside the COS Velodrome!

Clay Worthington is the USA National U25 endurance track coach and talent identification manager. He’s also responsible for all of the regional camps across the US. I met Clay when we were organizing the western regional camp. He came out to observe and help at our June camp. I was fortunate enough to have been invited to assist him during the Sept. 4-13 madison camp.

Teammate Andrew Lanier Jr was invited to the camp as was local talent Daniel Farinha (San Jose).

Neal Henderson (Taylor Phinney’s coach), Cari Higgins (Proman) and a few other coaches are here to help too.

Day 1 – Clay invited 22 of the best road and track junior athletes in the US. Clay laid out the rules and number one (as it should be) is safety. These kids are amazingly talented yet some had not ridden on a track before. The grand goal of Clay’s ambitions is to raise the level of Madison racing in America. The madison is arguably the most complex event in all of cycling. Guy East and Austin Carroll helped get lift off last year when they won U25 races in Europe. Daniel Holloway and Colby Pierce helped add credibility when they won pro six-day races. To raise skill and tactical levels of brand new track racers to these high standards seems lofty, but Clay dreams big –and- teaches in the detail so that these athletes simply “get it”. In today’s three hour session on the track we dove right into team pursuiting. Not the easiest skills (speed of pull, position in the draft, communicating while anaerobic, swinging off, latching back on, recovering to do it again) to aquire. All 22 riders raised their game in a relatively short period of time.

Day 1 afternoon road ride from the Olympic Training Center towards Pikes Peak (only 420m of climbing) helped to tucker these young athletes out (but only until they recharged their energy)

Day 2 – back to the track for 3 hours and we dive right into Madison exchanges after our paceline work. Amazing! I’ve been track racing for 17 years, I’m a supervisor at the San Jose Track and I’m the promoter of Tuesday Night Points races but until today I never would have thought that a rider with 3 hours experience could do a Madison exchange. These kids handled everything tossed at them. We practiced paceline Madison riding with 26 riders on the track repeatedly, with breaks for Clay to provide feedback, and the improvement with all of the riders was totally exciting to witness.

Day 2 afternoon road ride from the Olympic Training Center. No climbing but we did get rained on. When we turned to come back to the OTC we had the rain chasing us so the young men turned on the juice and throttled it for a nice 10 mile stretch into the wind. Like I said, these are some very talented athletes and I am very fortunate to be here to help. 80 miles in my legs today and I’m starting to eat like a teenager! Not really. Most of the OTC campers did 4 meals today (he he)

Good night!