SoCal Devo Boot Camp 2019

A new year means new opportunities and another chance to better yourself as a rider and more importantly to better yourself as a person. I was super excited for this years SoCal Devo boot camp because we had a lot of new and old members on the team. Every rider is fast and deserves to be on this team and it makes me feel privileged to be a part of this amazing opportunity. This year we had a few hard intervals and time trials on the bikes with a little bit of fun riding and skills training in the rain. Back at the house, we had some serious talks about sponsors, training, and nutrition while also doing team bonding activities.

Day one everyone arrived at coach Brian's house at 5:00pm and got all set up for the weekend. We had so many Ellsworth bikes in the garage it was hard to walk around in there. Once everyone got settled in coach Jason started to pass out all the new years swag from our sponsors.  For new members of the team, coach Jason gave them their Scicon Race Rain bag while past members had them from the previous year. I highly recommend this bag to any elite racer out there. It is so organized and the most amazing bike bag I have ever owned. This year the whole team was equipped with a new windmax helmet and trailyx glasses from Rudy Project. We were each also given 2 sets of ESI grips along with a pair of Kenda tires. Me personally I was given the Honey Badger xc pro and the Saber pro to run on my Ellsworth bike. After that was all over we played some card games and hit the racks for bed.

The next morning we got up at about 7:00am, ate breakfast and started to get ready for our first ride of the day out at Vail Lake. We packed up the cars and headed out hoping that the rain would stay away. The first thing on the agenda at Vail was to do a timed race up to the top of the dam climb which took us about 9 and a half to 12 minutes after our warm up. We decent down one of the more fun and technical trails called Matco over to the venue area for a few laps of the boogaloo course at race pace. From there we went to the jumpline trail to practice skills in the turns. Now with it slightly raining on us we made our way over to a climb called burning calves. The name is very fitting and the climb is very technical. Coach Brian and I were the only ones to make it up the climb without putting our foot down because it was so steep and slippery. Once we had finished there we went to coach Jason's trailer for lunch and due to the rain ended up going back to coach Brian's house for a very difficult trainer ride and skills talk. after dinner, we had a few lectures on training, uploading, nutrition, and social media. As soon as the talks were over all the team including coaches got all excited to watch Supercross.

Day 2 came along and we were back at it again with breakfast and getting ready for the morning ride. We loaded the cars up and drove up into Lacresta to a hill called Los Gatos. This hill is a paved road that few cars travel, and for good reason because it exceeds 26% in steepness several times. We did a total of 2 intervals up this less than a mile long climb and got over 1,500 feet of climbing. Going down this hill both times we hit over 55mph on our hardtails. After those grueling intervals, we went and got pizza as a team before going to a local trail system called x-trails in Temecula. We road for an hour and a half of tight switchbacks and technical trails before calling it a day and heading back to coach Brian's house to pack up and head our separate ways.
I would like to thank all our supporting sponsors of the Devo team, coaches and my teammates for making this years boot camp so much fun. I'm looking forward to this year of racing and new opportunities with everyone.