January 15, 2009 – I just flew home from Austin, Texas where I was at my first training camp with the new Trek-Livestrong U23 Team. This 5 day camp was the first meeting for all the riders, staff and sponsors. It started off with a day at the Mellow Johnny’s bike shop getting fitness tested, set up on our new Speedplay Pedals and fit on our Sram Red and Bontrager equipped Trek 6.9 Madones. The rest of the camp consisted of group rides, a tour of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, meetings with our director, Axel Merckx and other staff members, going over goals and the race calendar for the year, team photos and some team building activities at the bowling lanes and movie theatre. The support structure of this team is unlike anything I have ever been a part of before so the camp was definitely a pleasant surprise, which I hope is just a sign of things to come for what should be a fun, hard and productive season.