Leah Kirchmann: Tour of California..

It’s about time for an update. I’ve been training down in sunny California for the past two weeks and it has been pretty awesome so far! I decided to take off a class just to train for the month. The warm weather and lack of rain have been fantastic. The first week was spent in sunny Palm Springs training with Annie Ewart (A red-truck team-mate from last year).

I just left Oxnard on the Californian coast, where I spent the second week training with the national team. It was interesting getting to Oxnard from Palm Springs. I discovered that the Greyhound buses down here are not very reliable. A very late bus led to a missed connection in LA. Luckily some other athletes were getting picked up at the airport, so they were able to battle traffic and come save me. Riding along the coast and through the canyons in Oxnard was quite beautiful. Denise and I took advantage of the nearby ocean and “swam” in the waves a couple times. We received a few strange and confused looks from some bundled up passersby, I think most people opt for wetsuits.

A highlight of the camp was a tactics and sprint lesson from former pro Canadian cyclist, Gord Fraser. We got the chance to practice our lead out tactics and tried to set up our sprinter to beat Gord to the line. We were all able to benefit from his years of racing experience.

I’m now onto the third leg of my California tour here in Irvine, just outside of LA in the orange county area. I decided to take the train which proved to be a much more reliable form of transportation than the greyhound. Annie and I have met back up and are staying with a very kind family who offered to let us stay in their home. They have three young daughters, one of which is really into racing. They have been very accommodating and have been showing us around the area and pointing out good routes to ride. We took a trip down to the LA track one night to watch some racing. It was fun to meet Lauren Hall, who will be one of my Colavita teammates this season. She really dominated the races we were there to see!

Here are a few photos:

Riding through Palm Springs