Courtenay Brown

We’ve been so busy!

Beautiful day in Sonoma County

On Thursday, we had gorgeous weather for our 77 mile ride. The sun was out, temperatures were perfect, and the route was amazing. All I did was ride that day because we had a jam-packed schedule… we rode early and then all really quick showered and ate and got organized for our meet-and-greet at Village Peddler and then our drive down to Morgan Hill. It was around 150 miles of driving, because Healdsburg is at the far North end of the greater Bay Area, and Morgan Hill is at the South.

On Friday we awoke to pouring rain, and snow on the nearby foothills! It was kind of an eye-opening scene, I have seen snow in California before but only at much higher elevations than 800 or 900 feet. I got up really early and swam at the Morgan Hill Aquatics Center – it was dumping with rain and that made my outdoor swim in the pre-dawn hours pretty surreal. The pool is huge and sparkly clean, and I don’t know if it was the weather or the hour but I had my own lane. Sweet!

Then the whole team headed over to Specialized headquarters. We spent the morning in “SBCU”, or Specialized Bicycle Components University, which is the course that all their dealers go through to learn about the products. We learned all about our frames as well as our helmets, shoes, cranksets, and saddles. Even though 2+ hours is a long time for a bunch of constantly-hungry athletes to sit and pay attention, we were captivated! I really enjoyed learning the engineering innovations behind our bikes, and I’m very impressed with the sophistication of Specialized’s Designs for Women brand. We are most definitely not on some boys’ bike with a girly paint job!

Next up was the infamous Specialized Lunch Ride. I was not able to go because I chose to bring my race bike to Morgan Hill, and taking a TT bike on a fast group ride with sprint points and a finish line is generally a dumb idea . So, oh darn, I had to go for a run instead! I went on a rolling six-mile loop in the countryside near the Specialized office, it was wonderful. It rained though so I didn’t take my camera.

Bike Fit

After that we spent the afternoon getting fit to our new equipment – this is why I brought my TT bike instead of my road bike! I spent three hours with my bike fitter, Clay. He was amazing! The smallest TT bike that Specialized makes is a 51 cm… theoretically, that is one size too big for me, but because of the geometry of the frame and the three different seatpost options it has, the bike fits. I am so excited to ride it!

Specialized S-Works Transition

We finished with all the fittings at around 7 p.m. last night, then went to a nearby Chipotle to grab dinner for the road, and piled into the team vehicles for the long drive back up to Healdsburg. We got home around 10:30. I’m pretty tired. This morning we are having Team Photos, but the weather isn’t very picturesque so I am curious to see how we handle that. Thankfully I am not the logistical mastermind behind any of this, all I have to do is show up .

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!