NextGenU23

The NextGenU23 project has been in the works for quite a while now, but it was 14 days ago that it became a reality for myself and my six new teammates. The seven of us, plus two main coaching staff met in the new Milton velodrome to get acquainted with each other, the program, and of course our new kits! I had met most of the guys before at various races and camps, but there were some new faces and over the last couple of weeks we have been getting to know each other and I think we all get along really well.

So first off on our agenda was a 10 day training camp in Spain, Granada to be more precise. We stayed in a town that was tucked away on a hillside and we had an amazing view of the town beneath us. The accommodations were a little tight with 5 of us to one room, but it wasn’t so bad, forced us all to be social. The riding in Spain was amazing, though a little mountainous for my east coast tastes.

We climbed to both the highest village in Spain, Travelez, and the highest road in Europe, being the top of the Sierra Nevada, where I ran into some very familiar looking snow (happy I am not in NS right now, sorry guys). The weather in Granada was not exactly what we were expecting when we arrived to five degree, cloudy days for the first couple, but after that it was between 20-30 degrees every day. Wind was also a big part of the camp, I have never seen as many windmills as I did in Granada, there were hundreds in every direction we went, and they were always turning.

These roads were the testing grounds for our new rides, Aquila Equipe-R’s, what a machine! Love these bikes, Aquila and Racer Sportif were even kind enough to customize mine a little, with a very subtle maple leaf on the seat tube, nice touch! Real Speed provide our sweet training and racing wheels to match the bikes, again, giving the 'Pro' look! Garneau’s new course line-up was also put to the test with the different altitudes and temperatures we encountered, I particularly like the soft shell jackets! Equipment aside, the camp was really fun and I have some good miles in my legs now, just need to fine tune a bit in Belgium and get used to fighting for position again!

Stats from the camp:

-1154 Km ridden

-22013 Meters of climbing

-Skin Tone: many shades darker!

Now we are getting settled into our Canada house in Belgium, which will be our base of operations from now until the end of May. We will be doing many side trips to races all over Western Europe like the ZLM tour, An Post Ras, and many more, Including the U23 Tour of Flanders. With the bigger races coming on the weekends, we also have time to squeeze in some local Kermesses, which are short circuit road races, they are as common as hockey games back home, there will be several each day that we could ride to from the house. Our first race is a Kermesse in the town of Hannut, hopefully we can get this trip off to a good start! Stay tuned for race updates, I'll be posting them at the end of each week!

NextGenU23 Twitter: https://twitter.com/hashtag/nextgenu23 Now off to watch the Tour of Flanders!

-Edward Walsh