It was cold, windy and a little rainy but nothing stopped this great group of athletes from training hard and smart for 2.5 days in Greenville, SC with me and Karel.
One of the primary reasons for moving to Greenville, SC (from Jacksonville, FL) back in May was because of the natural multi-sport playground that would provide us with safe, scenic and challenging roads for running and cycling. We love being outside and over the past few years, we have craved a place to live where our environment was conducive to our active lifestyle. Thank goodness we found Greenville, SC! We now have endless routes for cycling and running to the point that we can train for weeks and never have to repeat the same route twice.
When our awesome athlete Izzy asked us if we would hold a private camp for another one of our awesome athletes (Leigh-Ann) and their awesome training buddies, we couldn't resist the opportunity! We love awesomness!
Now before I go into the recap of the camp, I must admit that I now have a new appreciation for race directors because we dealt with a tough situation on camp week with the weather - that changed hourly! We had no choice but to wait until Thursday to say yes or no if the camp was a go. 10 days out I watched and watched the weather and it didn't look good. Cold, rain, ice and even snow at some point during our camp. With only 2.5 days for the camp and our campers driving 90 minutes to attend, we weighed every pro and con and had plan A up to plan C for the camp. Because of the snow shower on Wed evening, we ended up having to cancel our camp on Thursday morning. By Thursday evening, most of the snow in our area melted and the roads were dry so we ended emailing everyone to say that the camp was back on. Hopefully you can understand why race directors really do wait until the very last minute to cancel a race. We needed safe roads for liability reasons and thankfully, the weather was in our favor for the camp by Friday. Thank you Mother Earth (and our campers for being so flexible!). Needless to say, we are really looking forward to having First Bourn locations for future training camps next year!
FRIDAY
1:30pm - 4:30 pm bike session, 6-7pm swim session
2 hours riding + 1 hour swimming
The focus on Friday was to give the athletes an opportunity to ride on our challenging terrain and for us to also see our athletes in action. For Karel, he can never look at a picture or an uploaded training file and know if an athlete is fitted properly on his/her bike or if they have the right cycling skills for training and racing. You can't judge cycling fitness by watts or speed because a fit triathlete knows how to ride his/her bike efficiently in order to bike as strong as possible but to conserve energy and fuel adequately in order to run strong off the bike. Having the opportunity to watch athletes but also to instruct on changing gears, grabbing bottles from cages fueling), climbing and descending skills, cornering and individual riding style is invaluable for athlete development. Also, watching our athletes in the elements (bumpy, hilly and rolling/punchy terrain and wind) is the best way to really help an athlete improve overall fitness. In Greenville, because of our terrain, changing gears has to be second nature. There is no easy ride here and you can easily go through every gear in small and big ring in less than 10 minutes as the opportunity to settle into a rhythm is very rare on our country roads. Every ride makes you a stronger cyclist and you have no choice but to improve riding skills. Greenville really is the perfect place to have a training camp in an effort to improve triathlon skills.
After the bike, our athletes had around an hour to clean up, refuel and check into their hotel (just a mile from downtown Greenville, where we started our ride).
We all met at the Westside Aquatic Center around 5:45pm and we did a few dynamic swim warm-ups to loosen up and talked about our use of pool toys as well as the importance of triathlon swim training to prepare for open water swimming. I demonstrated a few different swimming stroke styles, comparing "competitive swimmer" strokes vs "open water" strokes in the water and then got out to be on deck to watch our athletes from above the water. I had a main set for everyone and throughout the first 30 minutes of the swim workout, Karel and I took 2 athletes at a time in their own lane to break down their swim stroke and to provide some tips/suggestions for improvement. All the athletes (6 of them) performed the main set together, on their own respected cycles.
10 min warm-up
Pre set:
200, 175, 150, 125, 100, 50 - with 10 sec rest - building intensity throughout from 75-95%
300 choice
MS 3-4x's:
20-30 sec vertical kicking, then go right into
3 x 50's descending 1-3 (80,85,95%) w/ 5 sec rest
30-60 sec rest in between before repeating the MS.
50 EZ
1:30pm - 4:30 pm bike session, 6-7pm swim session
2 hours riding + 1 hour swimming
The focus on Friday was to give the athletes an opportunity to ride on our challenging terrain and for us to also see our athletes in action. For Karel, he can never look at a picture or an uploaded training file and know if an athlete is fitted properly on his/her bike or if they have the right cycling skills for training and racing. You can't judge cycling fitness by watts or speed because a fit triathlete knows how to ride his/her bike efficiently in order to bike as strong as possible but to conserve energy and fuel adequately in order to run strong off the bike. Having the opportunity to watch athletes but also to instruct on changing gears, grabbing bottles from cages fueling), climbing and descending skills, cornering and individual riding style is invaluable for athlete development. Also, watching our athletes in the elements (bumpy, hilly and rolling/punchy terrain and wind) is the best way to really help an athlete improve overall fitness. In Greenville, because of our terrain, changing gears has to be second nature. There is no easy ride here and you can easily go through every gear in small and big ring in less than 10 minutes as the opportunity to settle into a rhythm is very rare on our country roads. Every ride makes you a stronger cyclist and you have no choice but to improve riding skills. Greenville really is the perfect place to have a training camp in an effort to improve triathlon skills.
After the bike, our athletes had around an hour to clean up, refuel and check into their hotel (just a mile from downtown Greenville, where we started our ride).
We all met at the Westside Aquatic Center around 5:45pm and we did a few dynamic swim warm-ups to loosen up and talked about our use of pool toys as well as the importance of triathlon swim training to prepare for open water swimming. I demonstrated a few different swimming stroke styles, comparing "competitive swimmer" strokes vs "open water" strokes in the water and then got out to be on deck to watch our athletes from above the water. I had a main set for everyone and throughout the first 30 minutes of the swim workout, Karel and I took 2 athletes at a time in their own lane to break down their swim stroke and to provide some tips/suggestions for improvement. All the athletes (6 of them) performed the main set together, on their own respected cycles.
10 min warm-up
Pre set:
200, 175, 150, 125, 100, 50 - with 10 sec rest - building intensity throughout from 75-95%
300 choice
MS 3-4x's:
20-30 sec vertical kicking, then go right into
3 x 50's descending 1-3 (80,85,95%) w/ 5 sec rest
30-60 sec rest in between before repeating the MS.
50 EZ
10 bobs
After the swim, I handed out the camper swag bags, courtesy of our awesome Trimarni sponsors.
Thank you sponsors for having quality gear/products that we trust, use and recommend!!!
Clif Bar
Oakley and Oakley Women
Veronica's Health Crunch
Xterra Wetsuits
Training Peaks
Run In
It was nearing 7:45pm when our athletes left the aquatic center and they were super hungry so they left to get some food and Karel and I headed home to finalize our plans for our big training day on Saturday.
Thank you sponsors for having quality gear/products that we trust, use and recommend!!!
Clif Bar
Oakley and Oakley Women
Veronica's Health Crunch
Xterra Wetsuits
Training Peaks
Run In
It was nearing 7:45pm when our athletes left the aquatic center and they were super hungry so they left to get some food and Karel and I headed home to finalize our plans for our big training day on Saturday.
Day 2 recap coming soon.... for now, here are some pics of our first day of camp.
Swag bag thanks to our awesome sponsors.
Thank you Run In for providing extra swag for our campers.
Swag!
Coach Karel ready for our afternoon ride.
Group discussion before we hit the rollers.
Karel has endless information, tips and tricks from his lifetime as a competitive cyclist, recently turned triathlete in 2012.
Love those views!
Riding back to town on the Swamp Rabbit Trail
Swim session at the aquatic center.
Endless lanes for happy human fishes!