DAY 1 TOUR OF CALIFORNIA

This isn’t day 1 of the race, but day 1 of my first experiences! I am very lucky to have the experience to work with team SKY, a professional cycling team based out of Great Britain. (http://www.teamsky.com ) I have worked with them once before for the Grand Prix Races in Montreal and Quebec City. This event will be my biggest TOUR event ever! (I have only worked at one other tour- Tour Of Missouri with Symmetrics!) My connection to this team was through Michael Barry, a friend of mine, whom I have had the great pleasure of working with in the past, who is not racing here in California, but rides with this team.

-Awesome thing of the day #1- the flight and drive into Reno/Tahoe was AMAZING! The scenery is a mix between some Okanagan desert and Manning Park Green and Lakes. From the air I could SEE the trails that I am dying to run (when did I turn into such a trail runner?) and the drive to the hotel around Lake Tahoe was so beautiful. The riders are in for a treat on Sunday on such a great course!

-Awesome thing of the day #2- the volunteer who picked me up from the airport (finally) is a super cool mom-of-twins-who-has-done-ironman-adventure-racing-and-super-cool-bike-trip. We got chatting about trail running and she invited me to run with her trail running group in some trails overlooking Lake Tahoe on Saturday morning at 6 am! What are the chances that we would have so much in common and that I would get some running buddies for the first part of the trip!

-Awesome thing of the day #3- upon starting to work on the athletes, I was a bit nervous as my “style” is a little bit different than the treatment they usually get, and I end up adding a bit of ART and actual treatment to any issues that I can feel. The feedback was GREAT and the comments that I got were all positive (and confidence building!)

Awesome thing #4- THE PACKAGE that I got from head office made it feel like Christmas today. A new sponsor for the team, Adidas means that there were new clothing items for all staff! Golf shirts, a great fleece hoodie and a shell rain jacket! My fav though are the Steve Smith shoes! So cool! Ahh the perks!

-Awesome thing #5- Fancy dinner at a fancy restaurant. The hotel is the Montbleu. It’s a casino, with restaurants, and shops and slot machines. The team had a team dinner, complete with fancy bread, fancy wine, fancy food and fancy chocolate covered strawberries in a fancy swirl of smoke comprised of dry ice... (wish I had a camera at that point). It was pretty FANCY!

After all the awesome things that happened today, I am excited to see what the next ten days of my adventures bring!