There are cyclists that can plan out their entire season in advance. They have names like Alberto, Tom, Levi, Cadel, Gilberto, and Sylvain. There are a few more that fall on that list, but not many. Everybody else? Well … Fluidly is my choice descriptor for the way we live: very, very fluidly. And even for the few big names that can pick and choose, schedule, plan, and strategize the best way to lay out their season, things change. Maybe an issue with an organizer causes a little schedule switch around; maybe you went a little big one night and, well … yeah; a crash; a cold that turns to bronchitis; a family emergency. Things pop up that throw even those meticulously planned for a loop. For the rest of us, the things that cause your schedule to go one way or the other are countless.

For example, this past Sunday, about four minutes after the finish of a six-and-a-half hour day in Philadelphia, the boss comes over and springs, roughly: “So, Jason’s not feeling well and we don’t have enough guys to do the race you’d planned on up in Canada. Think you’re headed to Europe tomorrow to join the crew that’s racing up in Holland on Wednesday.” Fortunately I already had my passport, planning on heading up north, and the keys to my apartment in Spain were luckily tucked into a zip pocket in the team suitcase. So Monday evening I hopped a flight across the pond, met the guys at the airport in Brussels the next morning.

Wednesday was 220k on the beautiful-to-ride but crazy-to-race Dutch “roads”/paths; then a day to recover before another three days of racing over the weekend. All while I’d been scheduled to be racing in Canada. Events like this aren’t that atypical.

Fortunately, and especially as this team does some serious criss-crossing of the Atlantic, I’m not normally hit too badly by jet lag. Either that or I’ve figured out that for me the hot ticket is to get REALLY, really tired during travel, not sleeping much if at all, preferably with a baby two seats back acting as constant alarm clock. That way by 10:30 or so the next evening, even though the clock on the side table is far from agreeing with my internal one, I’m so wasted that the body can’t help but shut down for a solid nine hours.

That said, how do teams actually plan things out? At team camp in the winter, riders and directors sit down together with a rough calendar for the year ahead. We discuss races to target, those that would be ideal in buildup for those targets, and others that just fit and where bodies are needed. On Garmin-Chipotle, with 25 riders, all with different wants, needs, talents, and odd dislikes ("do NOT send me to ___"), this is a huge project for the directors to tackle. And then there is the staff component as well … Managing all of the soigneurs, mechanics, and then the stuff (cars, trucks, buses, etc., not to mention what’s inside that needs to be changed depending on the race and riders) on top of the already complicated rider side is a nightmare. Somehow though, by the end of the first camp everybody has a pretty good idea of what’s ahead.

And then as January rolls around somebody gets sick after traveling to camp in a strange place with a sick neighbor on the plane. Then one of the guys crashes while distracted playing with new toys on the road. All of a sudden two slots in the massive spreadsheet get pulled out of the first races and others need to be shuffled around in order to keep schedules full. The fluidity begins.

In February a rider crashes and breaks a collarbone: five weeks of empty boxes. March rolls around and four riders get bronchitis at the same race: swaps across the board. Another rider finds some crazy form and gets slotted in to races to take advantage. Somebody gets bumped to make room. Then two guys get sick. One crashes. A race gets canceled. Another race gets added. Two riders, throttled from filling empty slots all spring, need a break. Somehow 25 cyclists, a number that seems huge when you’re all sitting around a table together at team camp, aren’t nearly enough to keep races full.

And thus goes the shuffle all year, the initial spreadsheet becoming a long forgotten pipe dream. By the fall, looking back on the season there is sometimes a general similarity to the “plan”, but “general” is a key word in that phrase. I do NOT envy the jobs of our logistics staff! We have eight people full time in the offices between the US and Spain running the operations side of this organization and I bet they’d love an extra hand.

As a rider it’s easy to forget how much work goes on in order to make our lives as easy as possible that we don’t see. Fortunately we have some of the best people out there and I try to remember and thank them at every opportunity, as without their hard and often thankless work behind the scenes we’d be one massive rolling disaster.

The next time a buddy asks “What are you up to the first week in September?” or “We’re planning a bbq next weekend; you around?” unless it’s the day before, the above few paragraphs are my attempt at an explanation as to why I can honestly say: “Not a clue!”