Staff Retreat

1st annual Cycling House staff retreat

As the upcoming Tucson training camp season approaches for us here at The Cycling House, I get excited every year to have the staff back together again. We’ve had some amazing months of camps in Spain and Italy this spring, our midwest camp in Wisconsin, the 1st annual Tour de Montana in July and our mountain bike camps in Montana and Colorado. On top of all of the work during the summer, most of the staff is off racing in their respective sports.  All of that traveling, riding and racing is super fun and exciting but it also makes it a challenge to keep in touch with our core TCH crew and best friends.

Morning trail running sessions helped start the day off right
Morning trail running sessions helped start the day off right
Post run
Post run. Zander and Logan (yellow lab) showing off their chest hair.

 

That’s why this year we decided to start the Tucson season off a little differently. Before our first camp of the Tucson season we organized our 1st annual staff retreat where the whole TCH full-time staff got together for a 3 day TCH extravaganza. We decided to do this retreat off-site and away from TCH so we didn’t have any distractions.

Riding as a group and spending time on the bike with each other helped us catchup on the past summer activities and hash out new plans for the future
Riding as a group and spending time on the bike with each other helped us catch up on the past summer’s activities and hash out new plans for the future

We found the funky old copper, gold and silver mining town of Bisbee, AZ to be the perfect location for our retreat. I knew of this place from racing the Vuelta de Bisbee 3 times in the early-mid 2000’s and Brendan had done a few tri training getaways there over the past few years. A town of 6000 residents, nestled in the Mule mountains just a few miles from the Mexican boarder. It’s only about 2 hours away from Tucson so we didn’t have to overdo it with planning and logistics. Once the dates were on the calendar I immediately rented a house and lined up staff travel plans.

The Cycling House Staff
The Cycling House Staff

TCH Retreat Roster (L-R)
Brendan Helping
Ian “the rookie” Mallams
Drew Peterson
Heidi Rentz
Zander Ault
Myself, Owen Gue
Shaun Radley

Sleep was at the bottom of the priority list on this trip. We were much more focused on learning from each other, getting outside to ride and run and also soak up the local flavor of Bisbee… which usually meant a late evening at the local watering holes.

The staff enjoying a beer at the Stock Exchange Saloon in downtown Bisbee.
The staff enjoying a beer at the Stock Exchange Saloon in downtown Bisbee.

This retreat brought us all closer together, taught us things we would have never learned on our own, and helped us all become more aligned with our goal of running the best cycling and triathlon camps in the world.

If you’re going to make it to one of our camps in Tucson this winter, we’d love to share more stories from this trip with you.

dialing in our dirt road riding skills with Brendan as the leader
dialing in our dirt road riding skills with Brendan as the leader

Posted by Owen Gue