Our story

Like all good stories, this one starts in a garage. As a professional coach, I often found myself traveling in Europe for most of the spring and early summer and was looking for ways to stay more fit through the winter. 

In 2013 my wife, Kathy Watts, and I set up a two-station CompuTrainer "gym" in our garage and spent the winter training together indoors instead of outdoors. We thought it would be a struggle but quickly learned that the healthy discussion and exchange of ideas (Kathy is also a coach) led to some lively rides, learning, and fun. 

In 2014 we expanded our garage to an eight-station CompuTrainer gym and started inviting our friends to visit and train with us on select weeknights. Those were some great times, and we spent a few years sweating it out to ErgVideo while helping to motivate each other. After the rides, we'd sit around our little garage bar each night and talk about training and performance. I loved these sessions, as traditional coaching is a very one-on-one relationship, and the dialogue and exchange of information is very specific and controlled, while in our garage, it was learning, ideas, theory, and tests combined. I wanted to expand and make our group bigger, but technology limited us to eight.  

Then one day I was invited to participate in a beta test of a new application called Zwift. Within two weeks I saw how this could be used with other growing technologies to create a community of like-minded, training athletes of all levels and abilities who wanted to learn more about training while keeping themselves motivated through the winter. It was at this moment BaseCamp was born.

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That same year we added Debi Martin to the BaseCamp team. She took over all the administration and support of BaseCamp and is the behind-the-scenes glue that holds BaseCamp together and makes it all tick.

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In 2016 we launched the first public BaseCamp program, and we have never looked back! Long-time BaseCamp nutritionist Dr. Namrita Brooke joined the leadership team in 2022. She has earned a PhD in exercise physiology and a masters degree in nutrition, and she is also an excellent coach. We are proud to have her join us full time.