Thursday, March 11, 2010

Training Camp Tallahassee 2010



































































When I heard that there was going to be a Snapple training camp this April up in Virginia, I wanted to go so bad, but I knew there was no way I could attend due to travel, kids, and work. After talking to a few of my training partners, we came up with a four day mini-camp here in town. Four days of nothing but swimming, cycling, and running. Sounds like fun, huh?

Day one: 4,000 yd swim and 60 min run.

Day one was pretty uneventful. We had 4 people show up for the 4k swim and it went by pretty quick. I’ve had the luxury of catching two different colds in the past ten days so I didn’t feel 100%. A couple hours after the swim 5 of my friends showed up at my house to do an hour run on the trails. One key to get through 4 solids days of training is to keep the intensity down some and we did just that on the run. Nice and steady.

Day two: 60 mile hilly bike and 20 minute brick run.

Only two other hearty souls showed up for today’s workout. Like most of the country, North Florida has had a cold and wet winter. That is why I was happy to see sunshine and temperatures in the upper 50’s/lower 60’s. I felt really good during the ride, and even had to back off some for the 2nd half knowing I had a long weekend ahead of training. The short brick run after the bike didn’t feel great, but wasn’t too bad either.

Later that evening I had a group of training friends show up to do some yoga. I have the Flexible Warrior DVD set of the Yoga for Traithletes. We all got a good laugh of how inflexible most of us were.

Day 3: Local 10k running race, 2-hr bike.

Now I’m starting to feel some of the milage in my legs from the past two day. Four of my training partners showed up for the 5k/10k race. It was cold for the start, in the mid 30’s. Since I was sick earlier in the week, I wasn’t able to do a 15 min run test that my coach wanted me to do. So I decided to run the 1st 15-minutes hard, then back off and cruise the rest of the run and help a training partner run a good time. Isn't it funny how running fast in a race seems so much easier, than having to run that same pace in a training run?

A few hours after the run we met up for the 2 hour ride. A friend was able to round up a few more recruits and we had about 10 people for the ride. Nutrition is not starting to play an important role in my ability to make if through the weekend. It was nice and sunny with temps in the low 60’s and was able to ride w/o leg warmers and get some sun on my white legs. We had some good head winds on some stretches and I was glad to get the ride over with.

The yoga the day before was a big hit and people wanted to do it again after the ride. With my living room full of people, we Downward Dog’ed it for 30 minutes.


Day 4: Judgment Day – 3,500yds, 60 mile bike, 10 min brick run

We had an interesting start to the swim. A group of us were waiting outside the pool to open at 10am. Finally a lifeguard pops out of the building about 10:15 saying that the locker rooms and bathrooms are closed, but the pool is open…..huh? I found out later that the head life guard was out the night before, drinking and partying and decided to have his friends over to the pool for a late night pool party. All good until the cops show up to the city pool at 3am with a bunch of drunk people having a party. One nice thing about Tallahassee is there are a good number of excellent pools available – so we decided to head over to the nicest pool facility that I’ve ever been to, the new Florida State University outdoor pool.

About 10 fools showed up for the workout and I got nice and tired by the end of the 3500. Up next was a 60 bike on flat road thru what we call the Dead Zone. The Dead Zone is this one road that is 14 miles long out in the middle of NOWHERE. It goes on and on and on. Half way through the ride the fatigue of the weekend is really starting to hit me. To top it off it seemed like we had a head or cross wind the entire ride. Not to mention my nose ran down my face the whole time! Ugh! Needless to say, I have mastered the "snot rocket!"

After the ride I wanted to bag the brick run. After lots of complaining and whining, my lovely fiancé made me do it. I ended up running pretty hard just to get it over with and honestly felt a lot better afterwards. Go figure?
























So, am I glad I trained that much in a short few days? Mmmm... yeah, I am. Would I do it again? Ask me next year. :-)

No comments: