Anyway I’m back from our 3 day mini-training camp.
Day 1:
First practice - swim. We had a pretty short warm-up (1100m), then some technique work (another 800m), then came the main ‘set’. It’s supposed to be some set used by the british triathlon team (atleast for the juniors). It’s 200-300-300-300. HARD! The 200m is on 2:50 send off, then the 300’s are on 4:15.
I made the 200 and first 300 send off, but then I came in right on 4:15 for the second 300 so he told me to go on 4:30.
Second practice - run. 60 minutes run, ‘easy’ pace. We started around 5 minutes/kilometer and everyone was chatting, and then slowly the pace got faster and faster until we were running 4:10’s and a lot of guys dropped off. I knew this was coming so I was prepared (we ran with our coach and he always speeds up near the end).
Third practice - bike. Mostly technical stuff, 180’s, sharp turns etc etc. 30k in total then DINNER!
Day two:
Bike. The big one! The coach who was in charge of this workout is always volume-orienated and his original plan was to ride 180k with a swim and run in the middle. When our coach (and another coach) told him it’s waayy too much he said we’ll cut it short to around 100k.
He tricked us! After 50k he said there’s only 50k left to go, some some of the older guys started to hammer. When we got to the 100k point he was like ‘ok now we have to ride back’ which was another 50k. 150k total with around 8000 feet of climbing. And wind. Hot hot desert wind. On one of the climbs the temperature climbed up to 45 degrees (celsius) and I thought my skin was going to melt. I got really sunburned too.
Boy was my coach pissed after this ride. Before we went off he told me and a couple of other guys to get on the vehicle after 90k, but I wasn’t about to sissy my way out of this ‘epic’ ride!
A couple of things I noticed:
After we took a lunch break (kilometer 80) my legs turned to stone. When I tried to stand up my muscles would do a mini-spasm. That and I couldn’t really hammer either because it hurt too much. I had to ride at an even power output or cramp. I have a new found hate for people who can’t ride at an even tempo.
Second workout - easy swim. Mostly cool-down and technique.
Third day:
Race. This was really fun but really easy. At the beginning of the camp we were divided into A, B, C, and D groups (with A being the strongest etc). The race was a team-triathlon with 4 members in each team (one from each group). A did 600m-16k-2k, B did 500m-16k-2k, C 400m-8k-2k, and D 300m-8k-2k. The entire team had to get to T1/T2 before we could go off for the next leg. This was fun (carrying an 8 yo over my shoulder haha).
Anyway I don’t think I’m doing an IM any time soon. 20k bike is long nuff for me.