SILVER CITY, N.M. — Down here in the forests of southwestern New Mexico, where Geronimo and his fellow Apaches once roamed, not much is stirring these days. Drive up narrow, windy Highway 15 up into the Gila National Forest and about the only signs of life on the road are whitetail does, turkeys and the occasional passing fox.
Plus the turquoise-and-orange-diamond-clad Slipstream /Chipotle cycling team.
The fledgling Boulder-based team has already been invited to the Giro di Italia in May and is hell-bent on earning an invitation to the Tour de France in July. Talk to cycling insiders and the only way Slipstream/Chipotle doesn’t make it is if they fall on their collective crossbars in races this spring.
The team’s revolutionary weekly drug-testing M.O. is all good and upstanding, but a lab full of negative drug tests won’t be worth a thimble of Gatorade if “Team Clean” doesn’t ride fast. That’s why the foundation for Slipstream/Chipotle’s international splash in 2008 will be built on the windy roads of New Mexico this month.
Slipstream/Chipotle is five days into a two-week training camp that is 50 percent cycling, 25 percent eating and 25 percent sleeping. And, of course, weekly drug testing. Did we leave anything out? Not here. Not in Silver City.
“If the guys want to go get crazy and go out and party at a discotheque, they couldn’t do it,” team director Jonathan Vaughters said from Spain, where some team members are training for the Tour of Qatar Jan. 27-Feb. 1. “Nothing stays open past 10 200 miles from Silver City.”
This town of 10,000 once was the site of clashes between silver miners and Apaches. Today, windy, high-elevation forests of the Apaches’ former homeland provide perfect training ground for a Colorado team escaping the snow.
Riders have gathered here at the Holiday Inn Express from as far away as Birmingham, England, and Sydney, Australia, and will cover about 1,500 miles of cycling by the time camp breaks Feb. 1.
“It’s probably the only place in the U.S. where there’s a high-altitude training camp and (you can) be warm and dry in January,” Vaughters said.
Silver City sits at about 6,000 feet but precariously narrow Highway 15 follows a pleasant road through forest steadily uphill to 7,080 feet within eight miles. It peaks at 7,740 feet. Under a brilliant blue sky, the January temperature on Thursday’s ride was 52 degrees.
In Denver it didn’t get above 25.
“In a lot of ways it’s similar, without being able to go up a 20 (kilometer) climb straight out of town like in Boulder,” said Blake Caldwell, a Boulder native who did repeated climbs totaling 5,900 feet last week. “It has the rolling roads, the weather, dry air, altitude.”
With a team in its fourth year of operation but first year of full international competition, Slipstream/Chipotle is like an expansion team entering the NFL.
“First of all, what people don’t realize is teams don’t train together very often,” Vaughters said. “Training is done on their own. What they’re doing now is getting used to being around each other, the way each one operates, how the staff operates, the staff personality. They get an overall feel of the team.”
Said Jason Donald, a Winter Park native: “That’s one of the biggest parts. You’ve got to learn what each other is capable of. You get used to seeing them on a bike. You can identify the way guys ride, the way somebody moves out of the saddle.”
Unlike in Boulder and Durango, where Durango native Tom Danielson said the training has been “pretty cold and miserable,” they have a major support staff here. They get massages every day from a team of soigneurs, and Boulder-based chiropractor Kevin Reichlin is aligning them with the most modern technology, including a “dry laser” designed to painlessly heal wounds. For other ailments there is team physician Prentice Steffen and team sports psychologist consultant Julie Emmerman.
The food is a designed diet, with plenty of Chipotle burritos greeting them after long rides.
It’s not baseball spring training. None of the cyclists brought their golf clubs. But for a monastic two weeks that is cycling camp, they have all the luxuries they need.
It’s easier to keep focus when they see what lies ahead. The Giro is the second biggest race in the world and an invitation to France would put this Boulder cycling team in front of about 250,000 people daily on the roads and millions watching on TV worldwide.
“We know if we ride hard and take it step by step, by the international season we’ll do what we need to do,” Donald said. “But when we start off we don’t look at the big picture.”
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
