Team Newsletter | March 27, 2009

Team News

With 10 weeks until the ride we have plenty of time still ahead of us to prepare ourselves physically and to raise money for the cause. In this newsletter please find important information about getting a team jersey, our upcoming team kick-off meeting and a training plan for the 3 different ride options along with a schedule of all our organized team training rides.

Team Kick Off Meeting **REMINDER**

Please remember to mark your calendar for our team kick off meeting and group ride scheduled for 10AM on April 4, 2009. The meeting will be held at my house and will be immediately followed by a fun and easy team training ride on the W&OD trail right behind my house.


View Map

If you haven't already, please RSVP by sending me an email at ryan.troll@gmail.com if you plan to attend. Feel free to bring friends and family who may be interested in riding or volunteering in some capacity throughout the season.

Training

Now is the time to start thinking about your goal distance for the ride on June 6th. There are 3 options for you to choose from for the first day of the ride including a 30 mile, 60 mile and 100 mile route options while the optional second day offers a 40 mile route. To help you with this decision process and while you begin to plan your training, below you will find a listing of suggested goal distances for your weekly rides! These are merely suggestions but will give you a good proxy.

Team OutSPOKEn will offer two weekly organized rides. A Saturday ride will normally be lead by our awesome training guy, Brain Foley, and take us to a new location in the Northern Virginia Region each week! A Sunday ride will be available and lead by Revolution Cycle's and start at their Clarendon shop location. See our organized ride schedule below:

Brian will send around an email each week for the Saturday ride posted for that weekend with all the details about the ride. If you want to join the ride please respond to his email indicating that you will be joining. If you decide to join please be on time or if you have to change plans and can't make it please let Brian know. If you care to join the Sunday ride lead by Revolution Cycle's please CLICK HERE for times and meet up locations.

As always please be safe while training! In the coming weeks I'll include safety and training tips in the team newsletter. Additionally we can "talk shop" at our team rides if anyone has questions.

Upcoming Team Events

No upcoming team events.

Team Jersey's

Team jerseys are offered at $65 each. If you would like a team jersey please look up your size HERE and send an e-mail to ryan.troll@gmail.com by 4/1/09 or sooner.

Rider Spotlight

♫

Meet Stephen Robinson - Steve is a 2nd year veteran with Team OutSPOKEn but a 3rd year rider in the Bike MS Ride and proves to be quite the cyclist. Steve has completed a host of other century's including the Reston Century for 5 years straight and the Tour de Cure, a charity cycling event that raises money for Diabetes. Aside from cycling Steve loves sailing and is a life long enthusiast. In fact his honeymoon was spent on a 10-day bareboat trip in the Virgin Islands!

Steve hails to us from Bearingpoint where he manages IT projects in the IT Department. Look out for Steve on group rides as he is always up for a good conversation or to lend some riding advise!

---

Looking forward to riding with all of you!
Ryan

Team Newsletter | March 13, 2009

Team News

Hello again everyone! So I hope the last team newsletter found all of you ok. Since then I've modified the format a tad to make it easier for everyone on the team to contribute to sharing team information, stories, pictures, training tips, etc with one another. For each "newsletter" I will post a blog article here and you can add comments if you have more ideas to share.

Team Kick Off Meeting

Check out our team calendar on the right hand side of the screen. This will be kept up-to-date as soon as I get dates and times of various activities. For now I want to draw your attention to our team kick off meeting scheduled for 10AM on April 4, 2009. The meeting will be held at my house and will be immediately followed by a fun and easy team training ride on the W&OD trail right behind my house.


View Map

Please RSVP by send me and email at ryan.troll@gmail.com if you plan to attend. Feel free to bring friends and family who may be interested in riding or volunteering in some capacity throughout the season.

Training

Now that the weather is starting to get nice out we will soon start regularly scheduled training rides that will accommodate all skill levels. Whether this is your first ride or your 100th, we'll be sure to get you across the finish line and have a blast doing it! Starting at the end of March we will be hosting 2 organized rides per weekend. One ride will be on Saturday's and be headed by someone from our team and one ride will be on Sunday's in Clarendon and will be headed by Revolution Cycles. More information about these rides will be shared at our team kick off meeting. In the meantime if you have ride route suggestions or would like to get some training pointers, send Brian Foley an email at brifol5@yahoo.com.

Upcoming Team Events

We have two team events coming up in the next few weeks. If you are interested in joining either one please send an email to the contacts listed.

3/19/09, 7PM | Revolutions Ladies Night - Team OutSPOKEn will have a table setup at the Clarendon location in order to raise awareness of MS and to recruit more team members. If you are interested in lending a hand for this event email Ryan Troll at ryan.troll@gmail.com

3/24 - 3/24 | Bearingpoint March Madness Basketball Tournament - Bearingpoint will be hosting an employee basketball tournament to raise money for our team. If you are interested in helping out with this event email Andrea Wagenbach at andrea.wagenbach@gmail.com.

Rider Spotlight

♫

Meet Andrea Wagenbach - Andrea is a 3rd year veteran with Team OutSPOKEn and loves cycling! In fact Andrea participated in the AIDS ride a few years back and rode over 400 miles to raise money and awareness for an AIDS cure. Outside of riding Andrea can be found making life easier for her clients by solving complex organizational problems as a manager at Bearingpoint.

Andrea has been a key part of team outspoken from the beginning and will serve as our Bearingpoint sponsor captain this season.

---

Meet Brian Foley - Brian is also a third year veteran with Team OutSPOKEn. Brian lives for the riding season! He's been known to participate in many riding adventures through the course of the year including Ragbrai a 7 day ride that cuts across Iowa. He too is an AIDS ride alumni. When Brian is not riding he's ensuring that the infrastructure of Fairfax County, including the roads and bridges, are safe and sound. Brian is a civil engineer for Fairfax County.

Brian has been our fearless training leader for the past 2 years and will continue to serve as our training captain this season.

Welcome back...

Welcome back team outspoken! We are entering our third year as an organized friends and family team and this year’s experience is promising to be the best yet! With a new location and a reconfigured 2-day setup, there is a ride option for everyone.

I am going to publish a bi-weekly blog newsletter with all sort of information for everyone. In this newsletter blog you will find key highlights in this section, a section on training tips and advice, fundraising updates/ideas and a rider highlight section. That’s right I am going to highlight one or two riders in each newsletter. If anyone has some ideas, training tips, fundraising ideas or fun facts about themselves please send me an e-mail.

Training
Nice weather is right around the corner but that doesn’t mean you can’t start preparing now to get ready for the big day. Our organized team training rides won’t start until the end of March however if you plan to ride the 30, 60 or 100 mile options in June, your planning and training should start now! Each newsletter I will try to highlight an article or two on training. Check out this short article on training for a century ride.

Fundraising and Team Sponsors
OutSPOKEn is proud to have two very dedicated team sponsors back to support us for the 2009 ride. We have Bearingpoint, Inc who has been with us the whole way and a new sponsor, as of last year, Revolution Cycles. Keep on the lookout for sponsor-supported fundraising opportunities or events as the season progresses.

Rider Spotlight

Meet Ryan...I’m Ryan and I started team OutSPOKEn two years ago with some close friends. I am excited to be part of this team and look forward to the journey we all will take together as we prepare for the ride this year. Aside from Team OutSPOKEn, I spend a lot of time training and racing in triathlons, listening to house/electronica music, traveling and socializing around DC. Oh yeah and I work at AARP as a project manager to help fund these much more important activities. You can reach out to me anytime if you have questions about the ride, training or just want to chat! Each newsletter I am going to highlight 1-2 riders so we all can get a chance to learn about one another!