TRIATHLON TRAINING CAMPS

Why go to camp? 

For me there are three compelling reasons:

1. Camaraderie
2. Coaching
3. Conditioning

I’ve been able to participate in two tri camps this year. In February, I went to Tucson for my second time at the four day Tucson Camp. In April we had a three day “mini-camp” in Marin County.

Camaraderie

Ironman training ends up requiring a lot of solo training time, with specific workouts tailored to address individual weaknesses and specific race schedules. The lengths of workouts for Ironman training are longer than the average person - who isn’t training for an Ironman - wants to do, week in and week out. That coupled with the fact that each workout has an individualized specific purpose makes it difficult to find consistent training partners. On the plus side, these long solo workouts aid in the mental preparation for a long day of racing and especially for the 112 miles of the non-drafting bike portion of the race. As the training days, weeks and months roll by; I start to feel like I’m the only fanatic out there that doesn’t have a balanced life. Then I go to camp! Like minded people from all over meeting up to put in long swims, rides and runs. We don't all swim, bike and run at the same pace and aren't necessarily working on the same weaknesses. At camp we are all on the same schedule, swimming, biking and running together, sharing the same passion and talking about it over dinner and the snippets of other free time. The camaraderie continues after camp; sharing information and encouraging each other.

Sag Monkey - Providing Professional Support to Athletes

Coaching

Coach Chris Hauth

Camp provides ample opportunity to get personalized attention and critique from my coach. He limits his camps to about 12 people which makes the logistics easier and enables him to provide personalized attention. Not only is my coach a wealth of information that can’t possibly be absorbed in any one sitting, my fellow campers have a lot of experience from which to learn.  At each camp I received additional individualized input in all three disciplines from my coach. Being coached is a progression and a process of continual improvement with constant tweaking along the way. Spending several days with my coach gives me a chance to try out his suggestions and check back to see if I’ve gotten it right or at least if I am headed in the right direction. Spending time with my coach and getting to know each other also helps with our routine communication which is mostly through email.

Conditioning

LR Photo by Nick Nicastro

In addition to the individualized attention, several days in a row of quality training provides a big fitness boost. It’s not just the quality of the workouts as there is also a large volume of training during camp.  With the peer pressure of other athletes and my coach watching, I put a lot more into the training than I do when I am just slogging through it on my own. It is a luxury to set this time aside and not have the distractions of my normal life, to concentrate on training, eating right and getting enough sleep. 

The Tucson camp ended up being over 18 hours of actual training time. The Marin mini camp was a little over 14 hours of training. The camps were structured like this: (the bike miles are what I could do in the allotted time)

Tucson	Swim	Bike	Run
Day 1	1:00	4:00 – 50 plus miles to Kits Peak	0:30 transition run
Day 2		5:20 – 90 miles to Patagonia	0:45 transition run
Day 3	1:45		1:45 + drills
Day 4	optional	3:30 – Mount Lemon	Optional transition run
Marin	Swim	Bike	Run
Day 1	1:00	4:00 – 58 miles	Short transition run
Day 2		5:00 – 80 miles	5 mile transition run (0:53)
Day 3	1:30		9.6 mile run (1:43)

I liked the Marin mini-camp because I didn’t have to travel so it was less expensive, I could sleep in my own bed and I wasn’t away from my husband for several days. Even though I train in Marin County quite a bit, I rode somewhere I had never ridden on each of the bike rides and both runs were routes I had never run. With thanks to Rachel Melick we got to swim in the Tiburon Peninsula Club pool, which was very nice.  On the other hand, when I was at camp away from home I enjoyed being immersed in the topic of triathlon and spent more leisure time with my fellow campers soaking in their enthusiasm for our sport. I also preferred the four day format over the three days although I was absolutely in need of a rest day at the end of a four day camp. 

Scenes from Tucson (Lower right (LR) photo by Amy Kaup)

Scenes from Marin County

 I'm looking forward to the next camp!