Hey Guys, It’s me again, and with the start of the racing season coming soon, I think it’s a good time to review our tactics for the season ahead. But first let me take care of a little business, Jeff decided against the shoe covers, so we didn’t make the minimum. The official alternative is to buy the regular black shoe covers from our clothing supplier. They can be found on our sponsor’s website, which is linked on our team Facebook page. If this is a problem for you, take it up with Jeff, as I can’t discuss it anymore. My feelings on the issue were made clear when I ordered a pair for myself even though I already have a pair from last year.

Judging from the Instagram, Facebook and Strava posts (don’t forget to also post to our Myspace page, we need to maximize our social media presence everywhere—you may not think it, but sponsors DO care about these things), it looks like everyone had a good training camp in Arizona. I’m bummed I wasn’t able to attend also, but I already have my season planned, and I will be using all of my vacation and sick days to maintain the team presence at out of town races. I’ve posted this schedule to the calendar section on the team Google Docs page, if you are interested in going to any of these races, you can sign up in the carpool spreadsheet. But you’d better hurry up, spaces are filling fast, especially when people find out I share my homemade gluten free cronuts on the trip. (You can sign up to split the costs for the cronuts on the "road food" spreadsheet on the team Google Docs page.)

But enough about sweet road treats, I’m writing this email so we can get our team strategy nailed down. I’m not trying to "pull a Johan" on everybody here, but a big reason for Postal’s success was that they developed a race strategy and STUCK TO IT. We had a TON of top twenty finishes last season, and I think I speak for everyone when I say that we were only about fifty or seventy-five meters away from victory in 85% of those cases. We can get ourselves to the top step on the podium with some teamwork.

We need to get our lead out dialed in. I think the order should be Jeff, Mike, Brian, Roger and then me, with Jeff falling back after his pull to sweep my wheel. I think this lineup is our best chance at getting the big wins this season. I know that last season there were times when I was a little out of position for the sprints, but I’ve been riding my trainer like a maniac and have been doing a TON of visualization work. I can imagine every last meter of the finished in Central and Prospect Parks. I also took my GoPro out and recorded the finishes so I can play them back at home. (My wife and kids are really tired of watching the footage, but it’s a real advantage to playback the footage on the big screen in my living room. I think this gives me another edge in the sprints, especially if the competition is just watching their GoPro visualizations on a computer screen.)

The lead out should ideally start from about 10k from the finish. If you watch the Quick Step team, they really start from about 20k to go, but 10k should be fine for our purposes. (We’re not pros… Yet.) Of course, if there are any breaks away, we should work to bring them back, but it would be preferable to get one or two guys into every break, so they can sit in and ensure we get our chance at a sprint finish. I know Jeff was concerned that the other teams were getting really mad at us last season when we did this, but last I checked, we didn’t ride for those guys did we?

I think with a little more teamwork, we can really rack up the wins this season!

PS Some of the new team members haven’t submitted their credit checks yet, so you guys really need to get on that because it helps when I start taking deposits for the cronut fund.