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We had a nice welcome party in La Jolla from the lululemon team. We really enjoyed the evening before the big race started.

We had big goals for this race with the favourite, Tejay van Garderen.

The last training before the race started in San Diego. I was in such a good shape that I even was too fast for this cop. Luckily he let me go after a long discussion.

Our world champion, Philippe Gilbert, carried many bananas for us. He left us early in the race for a nice reason. His wife had a baby on Friday.

Here I found my American love - this dog just wanted to kiss (Look at the passion in his eyes). I heard afterwards that he's a big BMC fan.

I raced my time trial in a very aerodynamic position but I went easy to save my energy for the coming days. Because Tejay van Garderen rode into the lead during this time trial, which means a lot of work for me to defend the yellow jersey.

I snuck the camera in the race to get a picture when the peloton crosses the Golden Gate Bridge. It was our last day of racing and a great experience to go over this bridge on the bike. The commissaires almost took me out of the race because I'm not actually allowed to take a camera in the race.

Me posing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. I really like San Francisco and I want to come back here for a holiday.

Big celebration for the whole BMC Racing Team. It is always nice to have everyone on the podium because cycling is a team sport. We won the teams classification and the individual with Tejay van Garderen.

This year, it starts in Escondido, and travels north over the week and finishes in Santa Rosa. Each day is intense, With over four hours of intense racing over some of California's most beautiful (and challenging) terrain, the riders will cover roughly 650 miles over the seven days.

To help our friends at BMC Race Team, with riders from Belgium, Norway, USA, Switzerland, France, Italy, and Germany, prepare for the daunting week ahead, we held a kickoff party this week at our La Jolla store in San Diego.  Unlike the typical fiesta, it was hold the tequila but full speed ahead on the sombreros and of course, a pinata.

l-r: Philippe Gilbert (Belgium), Amael Moinard (France), Michael Schaer (Switzerland), Mattias Frank (Switzerland)

But it's not all fun and games for the team - they're well-trained, ready to roll, and have been practicing yoga at their training camps earlier this year taught by lululemon ambassador Ted McDonald from Malibu.

If you want to follow BMC and their fortunes this week and beyond, head over to www.bmcracingteam.com.  Live daily coverage of the race is also available at www.amgentourofcalifornia.com (their app is one of our favorites for watching live sport).

The life of a professional cyclist is hardly a glamorous one – it’s physically exhausting (try roughly 80 serious races a year) and mentally exhausting (and here I thought riding the seawall on a sunny Saturday required a strategy).

In January we said “hasta la vista” to Vancity and headed to Denia, Spain to hang out with the BMC professional cycling team. Along for the ride was Santa Monica ambassador, Ted McDonald, who led the team through a daily yoga practice to complement their intensive training program. Check out this rad video to meet the BMC team and hear what they have to say about yoga for cycling.

(Ed’s note: BMC does not stand for “badass men’s cycling” although given the content of the video, I still think it should).