Canadians Training Down South 2011

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First stop was at Monster Mountain on Saturday and Sunday. Monday, headed to Countyline and got sidetracked in the middle at Riverside. Arrived at Countyline Monday night and shot some photos Tuesday. Rolled out Tuesday night for some touristy time down in Tampa at Busch Gardens and hit up a Blue Jays game. Thursday night stayed near Waldo, but left for GPF Friday morning as some pros were planning on riding GPF all weekend. Shot some Friday afternoon and all day Saturday. And headed back home Sunday morning for the snowy north. So it was a pretty fast and furious week, putting 5200 km's on the car by the time we got home Monday night.

The week before I headed down there was disappointing for many of the riders as they recieved over 8 inches of rain in a couple days so they only got to ride a few days out of the whole week. While we were there, I don't think it was ever cooler than 28 Celsius in the day, and about 8 degrees at night. The Saturday that the Medaglias, Kaelin and Robinson were doing motos hit around 32 degrees plus humidity while they were on the track. It didn't take long to work up a sweat, just walking around!

Here's a few photos I took while down there.

Self explanatory.

Dallas Koncir

Cody Richmond

Damin Waitman

The Boyds and crew showed up in force with what I counted as 10 RMZ's.

Kobi Cox hits the south step up.

Josh Mann just coming over the top showing a little style.

Dylan Langlois

Lucas Cooke.

Kate Mckerroll is riding and working at Monster training for a run at the Ladies East Championship.

Milan has a pretty nice RC track setup on the top of the hill, he was bored on his day off so decided to give his Traxxis a work out.

A shot from the top of the "Monster" looking south to the rest of the track.

Looking back at the "Monster". Up the right side, down the left. Coming over the top to head down is a table top, landing part way down. Then into a double step down part way down, as you land you are immediately into a table top on the ground level..

Pete Zanderson

Pauly Plewa

Sam Gaynor

Steve Azakiewicz

Steve Boyd

Zach Koncir

Milans RC track is pretty sweet, pretty much ready to go for it's first race if and when they get their scoring system.

Met up with Hayden Halstead at Riverside on my way through, as he put his new SXF-350 through it's paces.

Next stop was Countyline.

Adam Bezan

Brad Dool throws his SXF-250 around on one of the many table tops.

A shot looking east at Countyline. There's still some track behind me.

Dool scrubs a little speed on his first run around the track on his new SXF-350. Unfortunately I heard he had a nasty bail at GPF a couple days later, and suffered a broken wrist. Look for him to come back strong after he gets healed back up.

Haydn Lothian

Jake LeClair

Josh Roney

Matthew Mittler

Mitchell Goheen

Rob Mittler

One of the few ladies I saw down there, Naydeen Lothian was definitely getting some hang time on the doubles.

Brandon Pearson

Shane Colic is training and racing some in the states. He definitely has the track dialed in.

Next track was GPF. You won't find a much better track down there to train on. They let it get nice and rough, so it's not a highway while you are riding. There's a nice mix of jumps and sections throughout the grounds to train on. Including an AX track and SX track. I'd assume you need an AMA pro license to ride the SX track .

The Woods have built a Members "Clubhouse". A place for the members to get together and relax, eat and train. A trailer gets pretty small after a couple weeks. Some riders are there for months. Or base out of there and day trip out to other tracks to mix it up a little, so things can get boring. There's a pool table, ping pong, an XBox 360 and some comfy couches.

The building also has a full kitchen and a huge deck off the back.

The basement still needs a couple finishing touches, but is for the training side of things. On those wet days or if you just don't feel like peddling down the road, just throw your bike on a stand and peddle away. There's a TV and weights, and will soon also feature high end equipment from the local gym.

Jeremy Medaglia was on the gas and putting the KTM through its paces.

Myles Bartholomew hits some rollers.

Ben Toye hits a berm on his dad's 450. I think just about everyone down there was having bike issues of some sort. Put 2 hours a day on a bike for a week or two and things are bound to happen.

Shawn Robinson

Jeremy Medaglia

Pauly Plewa

Tyler Medaglia was back on his 450 after a bad crash earlier in the week.

Mitchell McColl was putting in some laps the day before he headed over to a week at MTF.

Alex Laliberté

Shawn Robinson

Tyler Medaglia

Dylan Kaelin is riding this year with support from Gopher Dunes. If he doesn't get hurt this year look for him to be running a number in the teens in 2012 for sure.

Dylan Kaelin hits the roller section.