January is a crazy month.

There’s always a lot going on around the TCB lair during the first month of a shiny new year.

And while our heads spin like little tops and the madness of the month whirlwinds around us like leaves, we wait anxiously for the Team Clif Bar Cycling goods to arrive. When it all shows up we get to take a brief break from all that’s going on and just sit and stare at the beautiful new gear from the team's sponsors.

It’s therapeutic.

For ’09 the TCB Cycling program has a great group of sponsors supporting the effort.

Capo is providing some very stylish team kits; Salsa having worked with the Clif Development Cross Squad in Colorado for a couple seasons, now comes on board as the road/mtb/cross frameset sponsor for the entire TCB program—be sure to check out the new tres-white team-issue Podios; SRAM is the team’s ’09 component sponsor and the road team guys are all excited to run the impressive Red group; Mavic has been the team’s wheel sponsor since the get-go and, as always, the Mavics rock; Maxxis supplies the team tires and each season Maxxis rubber sees us through a whole bunch of crazy criteriums and fast, technical descents; Speedplays are always our pedal of choice; Ritchey handles the cockpit items, with the ‘Wet White’ stems complimenting the new white Salsas oh-so-nicely.

We’re all back on Chris King headsets thanks to the fact that the Podios run actual headsets—and the Chris Kings can’t be beat, especially in the custom red/green/black get-up that they put together to compliment the team rigs; Giro protects our noggins—and there are a number of us who have put the Giro lids to the test over the years; the big black team truck is covered with the excellent Thule racks; we take care of the team bikes with the goods from our friends at Pedro’s; and when the racing kicks in and the bodies start to feel it, Tyrone at Body Mobilization is there to help us through the long race season.

The beginning of the race season is a magical time thanks to the support we see from the team sponsors. We’re itching to fly all of the sponsors’ colors during the ’09 race season.

Here’s to a great ’09 chock full of exciting and therapeutic bike racing.