Trail Rider Magazine

28 Trail Rider www.TrailRider.com ISDE Team Camp 2024 ISDE Team Camp 2024 By Rachel Gutish By Rachel Gutish For most people, the word camp is usually associ- ated with some combina on of marshmallows and campfires, canoes and hiking. However, when I hear the word camp, I think of very different things: rev- ving motorcycles and high-speed grasstracks, re changes and… well yeah, I guess I do think about hiking too, funny enough. These are the sights, sounds and experiences of our ISDE Trophy Team Camps. The team camp is an annual (some mes twice a year) meetup of this year's selected Trophy Team riders. The camp is a chance for us to evaluate where we stand, prac ce the necessary skills to win the world trophies, and bond together as a team. For the last few years, Billy and Nancy Schlag and their US Sprint Enduro series have been generous enough to host at least one of our team camps per year. Frequently this is in conjunc on with their Sprint Enduro World Championships. The Schlags have been major supporters of the ISDE program in other ways too: they are sponsoring one of the club teams this year, their series gives us a venue to prac ce ISDE-style special tests eight mes a year, and for the past few years one of their races has also been our east-coast ISDE qualifier. I personally credit the rise of sprint-style racing in the US, along with a host of other factors, as help- ing take us from a mid-pack team at ISDE to a team that's a threat to win or podium every single year. Circling back around, the team camp is another one of these small individual factors that have cumulat- ed into massive gains. The team camp seems to be a common prac ce in many of European countries. For example, from what I've seen (and it's not called "Instagram stalking" it's called "keeping an eye on the com- pe on"), the French federa on seems to have a "na onal team" which serves as their poten al pool of ISDE riders. Not every rider on the na onal team will be selected for ISDE, but to be selected one must be on the na onal team. Many mes a year, these riders gather together for weekends of training, weekends which both improve rider per- formance and inform the selec on process later in the year. Of course, we are both blessed and limited by our geographical spread in a way that the European countries aren't. On the posi ve side, we can find almost every possible terrain to train in (and riders who are especially skilled in it) without ever leaving our borders. On the downside, with a team of riders who are compe ng in various series almost every weekend, and who live thousands of miles apart, doing more than one or two team camps in a year is a pipe dream… but we make very good use of the one or two weekends we do have available. This year's team camp began on June 11th, a Friday morning, around 8am, with a day of hiking. There were two "special tests" (2-4 mile long sec ons of trail bannered on both sides) – the "cross test" (high speed grasstrack) and the "enduro test" (woods trails, s ll rela vely fast but technical in spots). Our team manager, An Kallonen, had instructed us to walk them twice apiece. This is a lot more than your average Boy Scout hike, but given that we some- mes cover upward of ninety miles scou ng tests the week before ISDE, a pre y reasonable request (these are the things I tell myself, so I don't internal- ly complain the en re me). The next day was when the real work began. It started with a mo va onal speech. An talked about what it would take to win, where we were s ll lacking, and then he went around the group asking what our goals were.

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