Great training camp finished

I’m writing this as I’m sitting in the Airport waiting for my flight to leave (delayed, of course). I’m pretty cooked after an easier day and another two hard training days. I’m really looking forward to some rest (i.e. work and no big training) now!

On Wednesday, the training camp had an official rest day. I took the chance to get a longer (but pretty easy) run to the light house in. Most of the run was along the beach and the waterfront, and then a bit up towards the cliffs and the lighthouse (which required about 10 minutes of pretty steep uphill running). Great views from up there along the coast line – too bad I didn’t bring my camera. But here’s a picture from Horacio I found on Flickr:

After that it was just an easy 30 minute swim, some lying in the sun taking a nap, and more nice eating.

Thursday morning I got another swim in. 60 minutes with some faster/longer sets, all in all not feeling too bad. I had signed up for a “shorter” training ride today as it included some hill repeats. It was an easy 45 minutes out towards a nice hill – some switchbacks (about 10 minutes of uphill) and again great views from the top. Then we went back down the other side towards the old monastery Betlem and back – repeat twice for four uphill intervals.

The group then decided for a longer loop back, so I ended up with another 95k session. I thought of doing another core session, but I cancelled that in favor of a nap – as I had signed up for the big stage on the next day!

Friday morning the weather promised to be great for the long ride. It started with a 7.15 meeting to put the bikes in a van and then a quick breakfast. At 7.45 we boarded the bus to be shipped across the island. After 90 minutes we were dumped in Port Andratx to start the 170k ride back to the hotel. A quick picture of the group before the start and then we left. Pretty soon the hills and mountains started and I had to work pretty hard. After a short stop to make sure everyone was still with the group after the initial tricky route through the town. The faster people split off the front. Unfortunately, after the next mountain we re-joined them after one of them crashed on the downhill (probably a broken collarbone). Again, some more delay in order to make sure that the rider would be brought to a hospital. Good thing that there were no more issues after that!

After three hours of up and down riding we were at the base of the Puig Major, the biggest climb of the tour – almost 14k with an average grade of 7%, about 800m of climbing. Everyone was supposed to ride the climb at his or her own pace. Our guide made sure we were all okay and had enough to drink and eat, and then went on his own little training session.

Here’s a view from about half way up back to Soller where the climb started:

Except for this short photo stop, I went at a pretty constant heart rate and didn’t loose too much time on the rest of the group. In fact, towards the end of the climb I was even getting closer to the girls in front of me, so I was quite happy with it. It was probably the longest climb I ever rode, it took me 1h 5 minutes. The guide rode in about 45 minutes, and he said the record was 33 minutes. We caught our breath at the top of the climb, happy that almost all of the climbing was over. After riding through the dark tunnel at the top, there were some smaller uphills that didn’t feel too good, but we made good progress. Before the last long downhill some of the group stopped to pass some drinks around, but I went on with the others. I then ended up near the front of the group and decided to stick with them so I had someone to copy when going down the hill. We got a sweet draft behind our guide in the last flatter section towards Pollenca where we stopped at a supermarket for water, coke and something to eat.

Everyone was pretty tired by now, but we still had about 60k of mostly flat riding back to hotel. Again, the guide and one of the stronger guys rode from the front at a good pace. We quickly rode through some coast towns, and it was a pretty quiet group by now. The last hills hurt quite a lot, but the group stuck together until we hit the hotel after more than 7h30 of glorious riding through the mountains in great sunshine. A warm welcome by some of the other guides, a quick photo after the ride, a long, hot shower, and a nice, big dinner – after that we were able to appreciate the great day we’ve had. What a great day of riding, and what a great way to end this training camp.

Heavy legs after three days in training camp

In order to prepare for this year’s IM, I decided to up my bike volume by going on a training camp with “Hannes Hawaii Tours” to Mallorca. So far, I’ve spent three great days of training.

Day 1 started with sleeping in which felt great after the last few hectic days at home. Then a nice big breakfast and the first outside ride of the year. I had registered for the “25-27” group (no nor the age, but the average speed in kph) and we hit the speed almost perfectly. From the start there were a few people to chat with, some hills to test my legs, and only one short break. When we came back after 75k of riding, I felt that I had done something, but not totally spent. Still had enough energy for a swim session (25m pool right in front of my room) and a short core and stretching session.

The next day saw a bit longer session in even hillier terrain. First we did a run drills session in the morning. After that, the bike ride had just one short stop in almost exactly 3:30 hours of riding for 95k. The steeper hills really tested me, and I had to let the group go a little bit on the last steep hill.

I caught back up soon on the downhills – guess I really have to work on my power to weight ratio. :-) A nice shower, and I still had enough energy for another core session.

The third day (Tuesday), we had an even longer ride with a T-run. The terrain was a bit less challenging and a well running group, so we sped through the 105k ride in under four hours. A short break and then a 40 min T-run along the coast left me exhausted for the evening. Good thing that today (Wednesday) is a “rest day” (read: only two hours of easy training).

There is another ride planned for Thursday, which I’ll probably shorten a bit because I’ve signed up for the “big stage ride” on Friday – 170k of riding and about 2000m of climbing – most of it in the first half. Hopefully my legs will still be up for the challenge by then.

I’m really enjoying myself. It feels great to be able to focus on training and be able to talk triathlon and sports the whole day. Already starting to think about what I have to do to achieve some more ambitious goals. Looking forward to the next few days, but already miss my wife …

This Saturday: Spring is coming!

I have been getting on the nerves of my family, friends and colleagues by saying that “Spring starts on Saturday”. By now, all I get is a resigned rolling of the eyes – almost everyone knows that tomorrow (Saturday) I’m going to fly to Majorca to my first ever training camp.

Photo by jmaclynn

In the past, I just didn’t have enough vacation time to justify taking a whole week of that for some decent training. Now that I’m self employed, this  decision is a bit easier, and I still get to spend my long summer vacation with my wife.

So this year I’ve decided that I’ll try a bike focused camp. The way the winter weather has been so far, this was a pretty smart plan. I’ve complained enough about the harsh winter weather on this blog, so I’ll just mention that running on protected trails in the forest is still pretty much impossible. I don’t think I’ve ridden outside since December – because we’ve had solid snow cover since then. So the camp is coming at the right time to jump-start my biking and training in general.

Goals

As this is my first time in a camp, I’m not sure what to expect, but since I’ve decided to go with an established company, I’m sure they’ll be able to offer a great environment for training.

Both Saturdays will be travel days and I probably won’t be able to get much done besides that, so I basically have 6 full days on the island. In order not to kill myself, I’m probably going to have at least one day that I’ll take completely off or just do some very light volume – that leaves me five days for training.

As I haven’t had a very solid base training (biggest weeks have been in the 7 hour range), I don’t think that anything more than maybe 20 hours is prudent. (It’ll be interesting to see how soon I get swept up in training monster volume.) Most of this should be focused on riding the bike and getting a solid base for my IM focus after the camp. So here’s my breakdown of the 20 hours and the distances I think I can do:

• Bike: 16 hours (5 days), about 400-450 km in group riding with at least one ride of more than 150 km
• Swim: 2 hours (2-3 days), just easy
• Run: 2 hours (3-4 days), again just easy

Running and swimming will be strictly for maintenance, and if I feel shattered, I’m more than willing to scale that back. If I’m feeling good however, I’ll add some more bike volume – it would be great if I could get more than 500km in.

Apart from training a lot, I’d really like to enjoy the atmosphere and relax a bit. I know there’ll be some stressful weeks ahead before the big summer vacation.

Actually, there is one more goal: Don’t do anything that’ll jeopardize the rest of my season. In order to scare myself a bit, I’ve already scheduled my next race: a local 10k a week after I’ve come back. That still gives me some time to recover, but hopefully keeps me from doing something too stupid.

Any suggestions on nice tours on Majorca or places I should visit? Are you going to be there as well and would like to get together? Let me know in the comments – thanks!