November 25, 2009 (Los Angeles, CA) – The Canadian Track Program is currently running a training camp in LA with the riders who will be going to the Cali World Cup and select development riders. Day 1 of the camp in sunny LA started with mass start tests for some of the riders with more then a few of them successfully making the time standards for carding. From there, the endurance riders moved onto flying efforts in groups while the sprinters did their work behind the pace bike. The first few efforts focused on technique in order to properly get into the workout and wake the legs up from the travel day before, after that it was, as Cody Campbell says, “full gas”. The whole team is looking forward to getting some hard training in throughout the next few days as they prepare for the upcoming Cali World Cup and beyond.

The second day was all about flying-500m’s in aerobars. Laura Brown thought “it was great to do these on a quick track to get a more accurate impression of what kind of times I can do. After a few solo efforts, we were paired up. It was so much fun to be following the wheels of the faster riders and the guys. They really pushed me to go hard and fast.” Today was long for the endurance riders who spent almost the whole session at the blue line when they weren’t doing an effort and rode a total ride of 2.5 hours and just under 100 km’s !

Daniele Defranceschi also commented on the volume of work and was impressed with the improvements in all of the riders since the last training camp in October. “Most of us are going faster than we were last month, and last year, and probably faster than we ever have. This shows that the National Team Track program that the CCA, and the Coaches have put together is working.” After training as a group multiple times this fall the athletes are starting to gel as a team and their times are becoming far more consistent as they are able to repeat top end efforts day after day. Mark MacDonald is enjoying the fact that “there is a large team down here in LA keeping everyone on their toes. Everyone here has someone else that can keep them pushing faster and faster.”

The sprinters practiced their starts with the start gate and enjoyed being in a larger training group as most of the athletes train on their own. Videos of sprinters Florence Laplante-Lamarche and Monique Sullivan can be seen at www.youtube.com/canadiantrackcycling as well as Jacob Schwingboth who just returned from the World Cup in Melbourne and will be heading to the World Cup in Cali in a few weeks.