Peloton Magazine Réve Article - Heidi Swift

Swift: Team Camp

HEIDI SWIFT / VELODRAMATIC

Five days to build six bikes. Five days to film a million video interviews. Five days to take all of the photos necessary to make good with our sponsors. Five days to meet with said sponsors to learn about product. Five days to learn how to work together. Five days to bond and build trust and figure out just who the hell we are going to spend every waking hour with this July.  Our second team camp happens in five long, exhausting days. Reality sets in, people get tired, and plans are adjusted and then adjusted again.  Amid the photo shoots, we squeeze in a few quality rides. Among the marketing production, we squeeze in some time together to just chat. It's probably not enough to be ideal, but it's all that we've got so we take it. We get our final bikes - sweet, little rocket-ship type machines. So light they're not even legal. So new they're still a secret. (I'd tell you more, but then I'd have to kill you.) The energy everywhere is a little frenetic. We're excited, nervous, thrilled and anxious all at once. We're a little tense. We're a little stressed. We have a lot of questions. We need to be reassured. We need, maybe, to form a cheesy trust circle and practice falling into each other's arms. Instead, we push our hair behind our ears self-consciously while big lenses loom. We check our teeth for food. For the first few days, we ride bikes according to director's instructions: keep a tight group on this hill, get out of the saddle, a little hotter this time, can you back off the shadow of the car a little bit? Our main sponsor, Cannondale, attends in force with marketing representatives, product experts, mechanics, and designers on hand. They're enthusiasm is contagious. They want this for us - not just for Cannondale. They want it for each rider individually, for all women who have ever pedaled bicycles and for everyone in the world who has ever had the balls to take on something that seemed impossible.  We want it for us too.  What's clear at the end of camp is that we have a group of women who are not accustomed to – or prepared for – failure. We're committed to this to the point of being sick about it. The high production value of our second team camp only underlines the pressure. This is big. People are watching. We have promised a lot. We don't want to disappoint anyone – least of all ourselves, least of all each other. This Exploding Heart By the first riding day of camp, I'm still a little unwell. I've been (unsuccessfully) trying to recover amidst the obligations and demands of camp. On Thursday the schedule says "ride bikes for cameras" so that's what I do.  California sun. Light breeze. Quiet roads. Angry little heart. For the sake of photos, we're required to climb together. Not really a problem on another day, but today my heart rate rockets straight through the roof, topping out a full 10 beats higher than I've ever seen it before: even in a 'cross race.  So here I am, chest exploding while my teammates spin calmly around me. Kym pulls up next to me, listens to me breathing and then keeps a lid on the pace, calling the two blond Coloradans back when they start to creep away from me. When I get to the top of the climb I do the only thing I can think of: I cry. I cry and Maria talks me off the ledge. I cry and keep riding. Tears already, Swift? Sheesh, we're not even in France yet. Dream We're almost there. It's almost happening. There's less than a month now.  Are we ready? Did we ride enough? What are we forgetting? Three people have told me in the past month that we won't make it. People I like. Who also like me. Just being honest is all.  Does your disbelief sway us? Does your "practical realism" deter us? Does your "expert opinion" make a dent in our resolve?  Of course not.  What better way to wake up in the morning than to peek outside the window and see the odds there, stacked against us? I've got so much Underdog in my DNA it isn't even funny. Bring it. In a few weeks we will be in France during the summertime. With bikes, we will wake up day after day and we will simply pedal.  Give or take a few hundred thousand, we are six million very small pedal revolutions away from spinning up one very large revolution of another kind: a revolution of dreamers. Rêve means "dream" and we will honor that. We acknowledge the enormity of this ride and everything that it means. We are filled with gratitude for the chance to pedal into this dream in full consciousness, eyes wide open, hearts pounding.  Let it be lucid. Let it be delirious. Let it be imperfect. Let it be amazing. Dreamers unite.

Réve Team Camp - Day 1

Well the adventure begins... Réve Tour preparations are underway and I'm officially 100% focused on this adventure.  No more triathlons, no more excuses, time to get some serious work done.  The other 5 ladies on the team and I are currently out in Santa Rosa for our final time together before heading to France in exactly 33 days.  We've been working hard with all the great companies that will be supporting us out there and getting all the bikes, clothes, and other products sorted and ready for some serious miles.  I also finally got to meet the 5 women whom I will be sharing this amazing experience with and I can't say enough about how great and welcoming they've been.  Being the new kid onto a team or group of friends in never easy but the girls out here have been fantastic.  I'll go more into them in some late posts once I get a chance to know them all a little better.

After a quick flight to San Fran and a scenic drive through the city, we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and started this adventure.  Once in Santa Rosa we headed to get some ear casts made for our custom Réve Tour Westone Headphones and earplugs (great for the plane and for sleeping!)  It's a strange feeling having someone fill your ear full of pink goo but I'm stoked to get these amazing headphones! 

The rest of the evening we spend just getting everything dialed in on our bike with a ton of help from SRAM.  Can't wait to get some great miles in with the rest of the team!  More to come!

Best of the Bunch! BreezeBars!

APEX Swim Set

The APEX crew and I got to have a little fun during our Wednesday sprint workout.  Nothing like hopping in and out and running to get the heart rate up!  Love doing this stuff and hopefully it will continue throughout the summer! Great training partners here who really inspire you to go faster and work harder!

Women’s tour aims to inspire - Bicycle Retailer Article

Women’s tour aims to inspire SAN JOSE, CA (BRAIN) Tuesday May 8 2012 9:57 AM MT—Six female cyclists are deep in training mode this month in preparation for the grueling challenge of riding every stage of the Tour de France in July. The 3,479-kilometer, 21-day epic is part of the Rêve Tour, a collaboration between peloton magazine and Rêve, a tour company recently started by cycling photographer Michael Robertson. The women will ride the entire Tour de France—from the prologue in Liége to the famous finish on Paris’ Champs-Élysées—with the overarching goal of inspiring more women to cycle and to raise money for the Bikes Belong Foundation. The goal is to bring in $60,000 for the U.S.-based advocacy organization through online donations. Two of the riders are mothers. Not everyone has raced competitively, but all are already experienced cyclists. The women selected for Rêve are: Heidi Swift, contributor to peloton magazine; Kym Fant, co-owner of Norcal Bike Sport and Bike Peddler in Santa Rosa, California; Kate Powlison, research analyst and communications coordinator for Bikes Belong; Maria del Pilar Vazquez, a randoneur rider from Puerto Rico; Jennifer Cree, from Upper Echelon Fitness in Portland, Oregon; Kristen Peterson, a molecular biologist and professional triathlete from Boulder, Colorado. Rêve, French for dream, is meant to instill confidence in other women that cycling can also be a part of their lives, even if not at the same level. “This is a heartfelt, inspirational story. I mean, this is incredible. Each of these women is being able to fulfill a lifelong dream. I think it’s going to hopefully add inspiration to get women to start cycling in general, to become potentially racers and really reach out and challenge themselves,” said Bill Rudell, public relations manager for Cannondale, Rêve’s bike sponsor. Each of the women will ride SuperSix road bikes equipped with SRAM Red, Quarq power meters, Zipp wheels, Schwalbe tires, FSA cockpit parts and Fizik saddles. Rudell said Cannondale would leverage the tour to promote women’s cycling through future products and promotions and would integrate Cannondale dealers to help them boost sales of women’s specific gear. Rudell believes word of the tour will spread beyond the industry to help pull in new riders. “I think this is going to have a pretty broad, non-endemic reach,” he said, adding that he’d already been contacted by journalists for ESPN Women and Women’s Health and Fitness. “If we can tell the story elsewhere and drive more people into the sport, everybody wins.” The women have already attended one training camp together and will gather for a second at the end of this month in Santa Rosa. Other sponsors include Strava, SRAM, Giro, Capo, Schwalbe, Alpinestars, Small HD, Zacuto and Westone. Robertson launched Rêve after shooting photos for a group of 15 Dutch friends in 2010 who rode the entire Tour de France route and raised 100,000 euros for children’s cancer charity Kika. Rêve specializes in grand tours and plans to offer a fully supported trip to the Tour de France next year and the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta Espana the following year at a cost of about $11,000. —Nicole Formosa

Réve 2012

Réve - Dream 

Dream is pretty much the best description I could use for the news I got last week when I was invited onto the Réve 2012 Tour team where 6 women will ride the entire 3,479-kilometer (2,161-mile) Tour de France route.  We will ride each stage in a single day and will do so one day ahead of the men's race throughout July.  Talk about a dream coming true!  Spending a month in France riding my bike around the country and all in support of Bikes Belong's mission of getting more women involved in bicycling.  Bikes Belong was the same advocacy group involved in the Tim Johnson's Ride on Washington and I'm so excited to be working with them again and especially proud to be part of this unprecedented challenge for women in sport!

With all of that said, there are some major changes on the racing front because of this adventure coming up.  At first, there was a moment of question of should I or should't I take on this challenge because it means giving up a fair chunk of my triathlon season and thus taking me out of the race for Hy-Vee and 70.3 Worlds.  But after sitting down with Nick and Grant to talk things through, the decision was clear and I couldn't say no to this unbelievable opportunity.  So, in terms of racing, I'm heading to Kansas City for a 5150 race in a couple of weeks and then going to re-evaluate after that.  I've already started putting in some massive miles on the bike in prep for this ridiculous amount of riding July,  not to mention the climbing that we'll be doing during those mountain stages!!!

But it's times like these that I have to take a moment and realize how truly lucky I am to have the support of my friends and family to live this crazy life.  Nick has been the source and a humongous support of so many amazing things I'm now getting involved in.  With his extensive experience from being on Tour teams and spending a ton of time in France, I feel so confident that I will be prepared and ready for the challenge.  Working with Apex is also another huge advantage for me.  Grant and Neal have a great understanding of what I'm going to be going through since they coach real Tour racers and know what it's going to take to get through something like this.  Breeze and Meg Forbes are also going to be huge helps when it comes to getting my nutrition dialed for 22 days of crazy milage.  The Réve crew has been super helpful and I'm excited to get to meet everyone at our team camp in a couple of weeks!

2012 will forever be remembered as a break through year for me.  Not so much on the racing side of things but more so on the life side of the balance.  This year is turing out to be one of the most exciting and eye opening for me.  Racing, triathlon, and sports are taking me to places I never really thought I would get the chance to go, see, and do.  Racing is becoming so much more than that and I'm finally figuring out that maybe my "career" can take on many shapes and forms beyond being an athlete.

Look for more updates on training and prepping for France.  I'll be working with Strava to start tracking the training leading up to Réve and while we're out there!  Also, I want to shine some light on all the amazing people who have put this all to gather and who are going to be crucial to make this a success.

As Kate Powlison, one of the other women riding so eloquently put it, we're doing the Réve Tour to support more women riding bikes int eh US and to prove to any woman that no matter how daunting the trip - whether it's a Grand Tour, a century ride, a steep hill out of town, or riding to work the first time - it can be done!