Announcing the AthletiCamps Race School

Bicycle racing is a difficult and challenging sport. Riders of all abilities who want to be successful in this sport need a diverse package and skills, knowledge and experience to make the most of their individual physical abilities. Most of a rider’s bike racing education is gained “on the bike” and this leaves many learning opportunities to chance along the way. We believe every rider can improve their racing performance more quickly by participating in a “full-immersion” program of race proven techniques and skills. The goal of each weekend Race School Camp is to flatten the learning curve and teach you the skills and techniques you need to be a more effective and successful rider.

With over 75+ years of combined racing and coaching experience, instructors Bruce Hendler (AthletiCamps owner), Kevin Metcalfe (Team Specialized Racing) and Larry Nolan (Team Specialized Racing) have developed a curriculum that will fill your bag of tricks with things that many riders will never learn in all their years of racing.

This is not a racing fitness program, although you will complete many hours of riding that will certainly benefit your conditioning. When you come to the AthletiCamps Racing School you will learn “how to” race your bike to make better use of the fitness you have and will build in the future. Come join us for a truly remarkable and rewarding experience and let us help you become a more successful bike racer.

Sign up here...

Margraf and Safeway Win San Dimas Stage Race

With an incredible team effort, Mike Margraf (aka Junior) won the San Dimas stage race this past weekend by .29 of a second! Going into the last day, Mike was 18 seconds down and in third place. There were 40 bonus seconds up for grabs in the final crit. Mike and the team worked hard and got the amount they needed to secure the victory.

Just a great effort! Congrats to Mike for his second San Dimas win in 3 years. He obviously likes the race:-)

Preventing Overtraining with Proper Recovery

I realize it may seem early in the race season to write an overtraining and recovery article. Well, that is exactly why I wanted to approach this important subject. It’s the end of March, a lot of the country is just getting ready to race (except here in California of course) and spirits and motivation are high. This is the optimal time to discuss this all-important topic, so you can prevent it from happening this year and have a long, successful season. For this article, I took a slightly different approach by first asking a coach, Dr. Aldo Sassi of the world-renowned Mapei Center in Milan, for his perspective and advice. We then took the riders perspective with Dario Cioni, our trusted professional, all around good guy, who just happens to work under the guidance of Dr. Sassi...

Read the complete article here....

Berkeley Hills Time Trail - Martin and Margraf Come Out on Top!

Congratulations to Mike Margraf (aka Junior) and Dan Martin for there impressive Berkeley Hill TTT win this past weekend. Mike and Dan took on a lot of impressive Bay Area competition and came out on top. Continued success for both them and the Safeway team as they go into two great stage races over the next couple weekends: Madera and San Dimas.

Also - congrats do Dan for his win at the Merco Crit the weekend before.

The winning continues at AthletiCamps!

Routines and Checklists

We are always attempting to think of new topics to explore in our articles to help make our readers better bike racers.  Most of the time, we are writing about some physical or mental aspect of training, which of course is necessary and important.  This time, we wanted to explore something a little more “off the beaten path.”

Read the complete article here...

Attend Camps - Get Upgrade Points!

Did you know that by attending one of our camps or clinics, you can qualify for upgrade points? The Northern California district of USA Cycling (NCNCA) allows upgrade points for certain categories. Here is a summary:

• For Men's category 5's - Five mass start races of the ten needed to upgrade to category 4


• For Men's and Women's category 4's - Three points towards your upgrade to category 3

Currently, this only applies to the Northern California district. If you are coming to camp from out of district, we recommend you contact your USA Cycling district representative and tell them how our district allows camps to count towards upgrade points. They may very well do the same thing, since it's something that is under district control.  You can contact us for more help.

This applies to all scheduled AND custom camps and clinics

Also - this is retroactive for the past two years. So, if you attended a camp in 2007 or 2008, please contact us for a certificate.

Member of Facebook?

We've created a new Facebook group and would love for you to join. You must be a member of Facebook, so if you haven't done so, sign up (it's free) at www.facebook.com and do a search in groups for "AthletiCamps".

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The 2009 Cycling Season is Here!

The 2009 spring racing season is fast approaching and motivation is high with the holidays behind us. Racers of all levels are planning their training and racing schedules for the upcoming season. Let’s start off January with a Pro Shop featuring two of our most trusted (and all-around nice guys) resources for training and racing information: Dario Cioni and Burke Swindlehurst. Dario has moved to the new ISD team and will play a different role as the elder statesman of the group. He will now be able to assume the role of mentor and team leader. Burke will enter his 12th year as a professional with Team Bissell and plans to do all the major US races. For this month’s questions, we talked about early peaks and a general training approach to the year. Burke is doing the Tour of California and Dario’s team is currently also trying to get in the race.

Read the complete article here....

January Four Day Camp - Still Time to Register!

Happy New Year!

Our first four day camp of the year still has openings. If you were thinking of attending a camp to help your cycling this year, January is a great time to visit. Please visit our website for more information.

January Four Day Testing and Endurance Camp

New Cycling Workshops Scheduled for May and June

Workshops are back this year! AthletiCamps will be a leading two three-day cycling workshop spread out over a three dates that will teach athletes of ALL levels to train smarter. Participants will learn their true lactate threshold, heart rate and power training zones and how to apply them to their riding during two on-bike instruction training sessions.

Click here to see all the details and sign up now.