"There are a lot of Type A personalities in this group," says John Bucksbaum. "The competitive juices come out and nobody wants to be embarrassed."
Least of all him. Before you woke up this morning, Bucksbaum was probably in the basement of his home in Chicago, churning away on his CompuTrainer, a $1,500 computer-controlled cycling simulator that can be programmed to replicate famous races from the Tour of Flanders to L'Alpe d'Huez. Bucksbaum also does interval workouts prescribed by his coach, former Postal rider Robbie Ventura.
In San Francisco, John Doerr is a regular on Palo Alto's Morning Ride, a hammerfest featuring some current and former pros. In New York, when the weather's decent, Tiger Williams and Michael Patterson will be making their 6 a.m. circuit around Central Park. "Those guys are doing 25 just like that," says Weisel, who recently installed a Velotron, a $5,000 item that's the Bentley of cycling simulators, in his Sun Valley home, just so he can get his daily fix. Rich Silverstein rides 16 miles each way to work—and tells his staff not to bother him if he decides to spend a morning riding his mountain bike in Marin rather than returning calls. He's preparing for the Tour.
And when the climbing is finished and the race passes through, "we'll be jumping up and down like little kids," says Silverstein. "And then we'll go and eat dinner at a castle."
