Laura's story: Four early races

BaseCamp athlete Laura Rosema shared her experience at four of her 2025 early-season races.

An absolutely HUGE thank you to Coach Brian Hammond for getting me through an early season blitz—4 races in 6 weeks. Spring conditions are no joke and this year I endured mud, rain, wind, more wind, even more wind, mechanicals, sketchy gravel, angry truck drivers, drivers who have been wine tasting since 11am, and more. I learned a lot and was inspired by the people I was racing against. And most importantly, I had a blast. Well, except for the 40mph wind gusts that get an F minus from me, but now I know.

I also had consistent performances—3 of those 4 races included podiums—I got to be the 1st woman and 10th overall finisher in my first event—which also happened to be my 4th ride outside in 2025!—and the 2nd place overall female finisher in my last two events. Even better: I have a list of things I want to work on for the next few months.

To be honest, being on the trainer is a struggle and being outside in a winter wonderland is obviously way more fun. So I decided to do things a bit differently this year and spend more time outdoors Nordic skiing as opposed to being on Zwift for winter training. While I still rode and trained on the bike, I had several months where my skiing hours and miles surpassed what I did on the bike. Part of this plan included "racing into shape" to build up the miles, and I'm grateful for Brian’s guidance in getting me prepared, then recovered, and then wound up for the next one. I'm also glad that Brian took me on, even though he knew from the weekly Thursday TWSS rides that I'm a bit of a slacker.

I take shitty pictures. Or none at all. But here is a picture of a cheeseboard that I won. Which is great because cheese is better than rice. And so for the next few weeks I will be eating cheese and not eating rice while I reset and get ready for the next half of the season and whatever adventures I sign up for.