Mountain bike racer Cam Chambers of Colorado Springs finished the 2012 race season on a hot streak that won't soon be forgotten.

He won a single speed national championship, claimed wins in the Dakota 50 and Alipine Odyssey 100, won five of six races at the Winter Park Series, won the Rocky Mountain Endurance Series and the Sand Creek Series, and topped it off with a 24-Hour National Championship. And he did nearly all of that damage on his own dime.

Things are about to change for Chambers who signed on this week to ride for the Orbea-Tuff Shed Team in 2013.

"This is something that meets what I'm looking for," Chambers said. "This has been in the works for a long time. We just kind of made it official in the last week."

The deal unites Chambers, 31, with his friend and training partner Kalan Beisel, a Colorado Springs pro who joined the Orbea-Tuff Shed team earlier this year.

"It's going to be a lot of fun riding with Kalan," Chambers said.

Beisel wanted Chambers on the team.

"I pushed really hard to get Cam on the team," he said "He his obviously super fast and he his a great ambassador for the sport and our team. With the addition of Tyler Coplea and Keegan Swirbu we have a very well rounded team of youth and experience."

Chambers won't earn a salary, but the new deal provides transportation expenses, entry to the top races in the country, plus some of the best equipment he's ever pedaled.

"This will allow me to get to more races," Chambers said. "And now I know my bikes will be dialed in the whole time. All my life, I've raced on a 25-pound bike. This will be the first time that I've been decked out to the nines."

Orbea-Tuff Shed will send Chambers to some races in the midwest, but his schedule is largely up to him.

"I'll be able to race some close to Kansas City, where I'm from, so that will be cool," he said. "But after that it's totally open for me."

The Marathon National Championships (100K) in Idaho, and the Cross-Country National Championships in Pennsylvania are at the top of the list.

He has made a name for himself racing singlespeed, but plans to bust out the gears and race for the men's open title at cross-country nationals. He also is better at the longer distances, which will be his focus next year.

"I want my mind to think of 100K as a cross country race," he said. "I just want to get used to knocking those things out."

He also plans to race in the Whiskey 50 this spring in Arizona, the 64-mile Growler in May in Gunnison, the Steamboat Stinger in Steamboat Springs (Aug.), and the Dakota Five-O in South Dakota in September.

"The schedule is not not going to look that much different than what I did last year," Chambers said.

He'll also race in the local Sand Creek Series, where he'll attempt to ride the legs off of Beisel and Subaru-Trek's Russell Finsterwald.

He'll skip the 24-Hour nationals, however. After winning the title on Oct. 1 in Palmer Park, Chambers said he needed some down time.

"After that thing I was pretty much laid up for a while," he said. "I've been riding, but I haven't been training, but there is no need to really get going right now."

Chambers works as the Sales and Athlete Services Manager at Carmichael Training Systems. He raced for the old Subaru-Gary Fisher team from 2004 to 2006.