My bicycle racing team did really well at their first race last weekend. I'm really pleased with our results. image by speez racing

My bicycling team, Elbowz Racing Elite Cycling Team (Facebook link), had its first race on January 23. It was the Copperas Cove Classic outside Austin, Texas, a 90-mile road race. It was supposed to be a smaller race, but when we got there, all the top teams in Texas were there. They were using it as a training race, which was the same for us. The weather was so good, it was an extra incentive for everyone to come out. There was a rider who'd ridden in the Giro d'Italia for the Phonak team, Pat McCarty, and the 2009 British national champion, Christian House. Obviously they all want to peak during the summer, which is the heart of the season, but it was a good race for all the teams to come and start working as a team. And we won. We had three riders in the top five. I was the first Cat 2, and my buddy Randy was the first Cat 3. The team worked great together, especially considering it was our first time. There were so many people there who didn't do any work and just waited for us to do everything. But our team just shredded the race apart when it got hard, so it was pretty cool.

There are eight elite riders who will travel with the team full time. Our team leader, Heath Blackgrove, has been New Zealand national road race champion. He's ridden for the biggest teams in the United States, and he's won some really big races. Then we have about six more guys who will race regionally.

I've got them a house to live in so everyone can train and eat together as a team. It's working well. image by speez racing

We did a big training camp the week before. We rented a big house in Fredericksburg, an hour or so outside Austin. Eight or ten of us spent a week there. We cooked together, rode together, did everything together for the whole week. We started out with a three-hour ride on Sunday. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we rode four to six hours every day, doing workouts and things. Our team captain wanted to do the training camp to get everybody to ride together, get everybody tired, see what we needed to work on as a team. But we had to taper a little bit for the race on Saturday, so we took Thursday off, and Friday we rode just a couple of hours. So before the race even started, we had over 300 miles in for the week.

I haven't ridden a motorcycle since Valencia. I take that back—I rode a Yamaha Zuma scooter for about five minutes at the training camp. I did a couple of wheelies to get the skills back.

It was going to be a small race for us. The first race, you want to try to win it, but the main thing was to learn to work as a team. Last year when I did the Copperas Classic, there were maybe 50 riders there. But when we got there this year, it was a 100-deep field, and everybody, all the best guys in Texas, were there. It kind of turned into a team meeting on Friday night. "Okay, we need to really work together and make this thing happen." I was a little nervous. We have some heavy hitters on the team, but I really wanted to help, and also get a decent result so I could get some points and try to upgrade to a Cat 1 license.

Team meals are generally pretty fun. We try to keep it low-key. image by speez racing

So the race started, and I'm cruising in the middle of the pack. A little nervous. You know, three feet off the ground going 30-40 mph and you're trapped in a paceline with nothing but Lycra between you and the pavement. But we worked as a team. Before it got really hard, I was taking my pulls with the team, and helping out early in the race. I started getting more comfortable with getting through the field, riding in the dirt, basically, to pass a couple of people. Then we got to the hard part of the race. It got really windy. So we got Heath up to the front, and he said, "Okay, everybody ride double file, basically 30 mph, and get everybody tired, and when we take a right here, there's going to be a big crosswind. I want half the team to give 100% effort and half the team to save a little bit." When they did that, it broke the field apart. There's no shelter when there's a crosswind. The team puts everybody on the side of the road and only protects themselves. It just shredded the field.

I actually got caught in the second split and just sat in with them, because obviously I wasn't going to help the second group get back to my team. Toward the end of the race they slowly closed the gap, so I jumped up to the first group and waited with those guys. We had a pretty good sprint with that pack. Heath was able to win the race. Our team had first place, fourth and fifth, and I finished 12th. Everybody else on the team was out of the top 30, because they had done all their work for the team and blown themselves up to get everybody else up in the positions.

Just like in MotoGP, I'm not a mechanic. And that's a good thing. image by speez racing

It was really cool. Obviously we had the numbers, we had the biggest team there, but in saying that, when you do that, everybody in the race just watches you and waits to see what the team's going to do. The team went to the front, they worked together, and rode as one. It was pretty cool watching them do all that and making the race happen. Really, it was awesome watching the team work together for the first time. We'd trained together for a week, we did some good training, but then we got into a race situation, and they worked like clockwork. It was a smaller race, but it was good, because all the major players were there. Everybody on my team, I know their fitness, and they're just going to get faster and faster as the season goes on. I'm looking forward to it.

I have an exciting and busy year ahead of me. Not only will I have to concentrate on racing and training, the team will also be promoting some local charities through outreach programs and awareness. In addition to that, we'll also be doing our part to support Texas cycling by co-sponsoring races and putting on skill clinics for beginning riders. Most people only see what happens in the race but there's lots to do behind the scenes in order to build a foundation for a successful program.

So I'm flying out on Friday to go to Malaysia. I put in a big block of training last week, obviously, a very important week for me. Now, I've just got to fully recover from that, do a couple more days of a little bit of training before I go to Malaysia. Go do the test, knock out some stuff with the team, come back for two weeks, go back to Malaysia for a week, come back for two weeks, and then we fly to Qatar and it's game time. It's going to be here quicker than we realize, but it's also still a bit away. It's going to be fun looking forward to it. A lot of stuff's been going on this off-season with me, working with the cycling team, and then on the motorcycle front, obviously, moving to the factory team. Other racers moving to different teams. It's been a big off-season, just watching everything go around and getting ready for everything.

While I try to step away from racing in the off-season, there are little reminders of my real job. image by speez racing

In the off-season, I try to do something else so I don't think about MotoGP so much. A lot of people get to the off-season and still think about MotoGP all the time. Honestly, I haven't ridden a motorcycle since Valencia. I take that back—I rode a Yamaha Zuma scooter for about five minutes at the training camp. I did a couple of wheelies to get the skills back. But other than that, I haven't ridden and I haven't thought about it at all. It's important during the season to focus 100% on it, and it's just as important during the off-season to take as much thought away from it as you can. Obviously, training on the bicycle is fun for me, and it keeps me fit and raring to go. When I get back on the motorcycle, I'm all there. But it also takes my mind off it, where I don't have to think about it at all. I think that's important, too.