Team Timex Camp 2014 – Only once would I like to get there without a jetlag

The whole Team Timex 2014

Florida, not New Jersey, fun in the sun instead of freezing in the snow.

 

That was kind of the theme for this year’s team camp. And “Män, sät was some four days for Se Tscherman!” Ann and I flew out Wednesday and camp only started Thursday at 5pm so we had just about one day to explore the surroundings of the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida.

 

Bradenton, FL

What we did? Go to the beach, naturally! And fun the three of us had even if only two of us were brave enough for the “chilly” 18°C waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

 

Per and Mr. Waschbärbauch

Camp then hit off on Thursday at 5pm with a tour of the IMG Academy that used to be the Bollitieri Tennis Academy way back when I was an aspiring young tennis player in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I always wanted to go there and more than 20 years later I finally get there as a “NON-SPORT GUEST”.

  

It's official I am a "NON-SPORT GUEST"

Things change I suppose. Under the IMG management the former world class tennis academy has evolved into an academy for a wide range of sports from tennis through soccer, golf, basketball all the way through lacrosse. And we were free to explore and use all of the facilities despite of our “NON-SPORTS GUEST”-status.

The tour was followed by a team dinner where each of us introduced him- or herself with some tiny fact aside from sports. There was quite a few laughs and before we knew we were drinking Yuengling Lager, luckily a beer with a great German heritage.

At 6am the next morning there followed the first workout of camp, a swim oat a local 50m pool. After the long day of travelling and the climate change… damn did those 50m feel looooong.

The early bird swim Friday morning

What followed then was what was called the “Timex Day” with quite a few clinics concerning Timex products, promotion opportunities and an exciting outlook onto what is in the product pipeline at Timex for this year. And indeed there is quite some interesting stuff coming out this fall. Regrettably I am not allowed to talk about that just yet.

Our bread & butter!

Almost more exciting though was the traditional 5k “run” we had Friday afternoon. This time the motto was Florida tourists and quite a few of us really looked the part: Again the run was won by the Swedish express Per Ericsson who beat everybody out wearing not running shoes but sandals!

Florida tourists!

 Friday night then it was time for out awards dinner and there were some outstanding performances to be honored. Male athlete of the year was well earned by Chris Thomas, who among a few other great results won the Ironman 70.3 Worlds in his age group as well finished 8^th overall at Ironman 70.3 Racine. Perhaps a little bit more impressive were the results of his female counterpart Susanne Davis who not only won the US age group Nationals over the Olympic distance but also won her age group at the Ironman World Championships in Kona last year.

Saturday then was “Sponsors Day” where our other supporters showcased their products. Especially anticipated was the presentation of our new bike for the season the Trek Speed Concept 2014. Really sleek and fast looking this rocket of a bicycle promises to carry quite a few of us to new personal bests on the bike this year.

Our ride for 2014 and beyond.

In addition to this friggin’ fast machine we’ll be riding bikes spec’ed with Shimano components and wheels as well as have access to the Blueseventy Helix wetsuit as well as their PZTX swimskin that lead me to a 3min PB at the swim in Kona last year.

And then it was time to party Saturday night. I held on for dear life until 12pm but then the jetlag prevailed and I had to call it a day. Bad for me because a lot of us turned night into day and partied until the break of dawn I have heard. The badass partying though showed on a few faced Sunday morning when we had out big photo shoot. That’s why I’ll only post one group pic here. ;)

Bruce - The Photobomb - Gennari, Luis and the girls!

And you can see we had a load of fun until the very last minute. The last minute for me was a great lunch en route to the airport at a great bar place in St. Petersburg with Mike Wien, DaveO, Melanie Sherman, Cindy Bannink, Juli Fiocca Craig Lanza and Ryan Vanderloop.

Ok and now it’s time to attack my “Waschbärbauch” in order to have a chance to make it on this great team for another season!

Ah, not to forget the guys who make it all happen, Tristan Brown and Tom Shuler: