EverydayTraining

The fourth running of our Lanzarote Endurance camp has just come to an end; with the day spent dropping our weary (and hungover!) campers at the airport for their flights home. It’s been a blast as always and we were privileged to witness many people’s redefining of what they felt was possible to do in a week of focussed training. With about half of this year’s camp made up of ‘repeat offenders, and many of our new camp-friends already talking of a return for next year, we are encouraged that we have a great formula for a challenging camp for endurance triathletes, and will certainly be running it again next year.  We tried a few new things this year, and were pleased with those additions and some of those will stay in the schedule –  as well as possible additions that we’ve already started thinking about!

Yet again every athlete managed over 30 hours of training in the week with the majority completing the camp. This “30 hours” is not a strict completion criteria – however it is round about the volume that anyone completing the camp will achieve. Only once have we had someone complete the camp’s schedule in under 30 hours – and that was through doing only the minimums and hitting everything at a pace that most of us would not manage!

We had an unplanned change of hotel this year which meant that one of the new elements of this year’s camp was increased logistics of getting to and from the sea swims and some of our races. Luckily for us, as is typical of the sort of athlete that comes on our camps, no-one batted an eyelid at the mile jog to the beach morning or running back afterwards, despite the hill! Similarly having to run 4.5km to the start of a 10k handicapped running race at the end of the 5th day didn’t raise a single word of complaint 0 in fact some of us were rather pleased of the opportunity to turn the session into a decent length run on a training camp that is generally very bike dominant.

The fact of the short journey to and from the beach meant we had rented a vehicle for the week to transport wetsuits, shoes and non-running athletes each morning. having this, and sarah willing to drive it for us,  enabled us to offer a 30 minute brick run from the top of Haria. It was an awesome addition, providing some stunning views and a beautiful running trail, and is a definitely a ‘keeper” – in future we’ll possibly even allow time for a longer run for those not overly obsessed with drinking coffee and eating ice creams in the cafe there ;o)  It certainly got us thinking when we climbed Femes that the mountains around there also look like good running terrain. Although Steven and I have spent many, many weeks training in Lanzarote, we are still discovering new parts and potential routes on the island- what a wonderful place.

We’ve had a few new course records broken this year too. Good conditions on El Golfo certainly helped three people better the mark set by Brett in our first camp, all by over a minute. Steven was rightly worried about finally being beaten on Tabeyesco when Matt, a modest and lightweight athlete smoked the sporting 10 mile loop of  El Golfo TT, giving us an indication of what his clear “climbers” form might do up on the hill climb competition. He didn’t fail to deliver wither a sub 29 ride up Tabeyesco smashing over a minute off the previous mark. He didn’t finish there and demonstrated how good an athlete he is by taking the 10k handicap race running through everyone in the field other than Jo and setting a new course record of 38:33 securing a camp win. Matt proved to be an athlete that didn’t feel the need to prove himself letting the races demonstrate his strength which made him a pleasure to ride with always looking out for other campers and helping keep groups together. If he returns next year I hope he now has the confidence to test the faster riders once in a while.

The “guess your time” 10k is always a bit of a highlight as most are a little surprised how fast they can run. It’s also quite impressive how close some get. With a group of nearly 20 athletes you’d expect just through randomness to get some pretty close but this camp the third best, Roz, guessed within 33s and then we had a tie with both Brian and Heather guessing within 5s.

By the final day of the camp everyone is feeling pretty tired and have at least the Ironman route to get around. This year was not particularly kind with a strong wind from the north making the middle part of the ride hard. Everyone got round with the groups working together to get everyone home. At last, after 3 failed attempts in previous years,  we had a group managed the 200k Ironman+ route. We’ve never had a group manage it before, for various reasons, and this year it was looking like the same with a double puncture 8 miles due to a bottle in the road which resulted in a return to the hotel for a new tyre. With these early mishaps the group pulled together to make sure they got round riding as a compact six person group throughout the ride other than the descents. Everyone in the group willing to make those small little compromises to how they might have ridden if alone, or in a group of similarly paced cyclists, in order to keep the group together. Somehow, they even found time for a sit-down of lunch in Haria.

Compared to our other camps we’ve actually recorded the lowest average hours of training per person at 30:16. The main reason for this is that we include the training undertaken by our masseuse and physio support in the statistics, who were able to train less than in previous years due to the higher workload we put on them by inviting more athletes along! We also had two early exits and one very injured participant who was unfortunately unable to take part in much of the schedule. It was brave of Ellen to still come along despite this, and she did what she was able to do, mostly by herself, and also supported her other half Matt, through his week. Of course – we don’t want to give the impression that we’re too focused on the stats and records…but it does provide Steven with something to do once all the campers have departed!

It feels very lonely without the vibrant group around, so we are of course busy planning and plotting the next camp, which will be in the Pyrenees for a more cycling oriented week and some proper big hills to race up :o)

In the mean time, Jo will be heading back to Lanzarote to host a week of triathlon skills training for beginners-  or those wishing to sharpen up on the basic skills of triathlon – in conjunction with TriSports Lanzarote. More details of this upcoming camp here.

Finally  -many, many thanks to our wonderful sponsors for generously supporting our camps.  It’s really a lovely bonus that we can offer products, samples, gifts and valuable prizes to our participants, and goes to making EverydayTraining camps just a little more special.

Powerbar  The Tri Touch  Blueseventy  TenPoint Triathlon  Freespeed  Primal Lifestyle  Firefly Recovery  Nuun

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Well, here we are already, the final day of camp. The schedule for the day is to ride the Ironman route ,and this tough 180k ride is classed as a points competition, in that the whole ironman route must be completed in order to satisfy camp completion. We encourage everyone to earn themselves swim and run wildcards the previous day in order to allow ample time to complete the routes, and be back in time to pack up bikes and enjoy an evening of socialising and celebrating the end of the camp. However, there are always a few campers who like to take the opportunity to complete a swim-bike-run day, and in the past we’ve had people swimming beforehand and then running up to 2 hours after their 8+ hour ride!

We split the camp into three groups: two doing the standard Ironman route ( with all the bits in and out of PdC to make the full 180km) and a group attempting the ironman plus ride – a 200+km ride that takes in both Playa Blanca in the south and Orzola in the north. That ride would take a relatively strong group, riding at a steady pace in the region of 8 hours plus stops, and to date has never been successfully completed on camp.

Emma lead a steady-paced group who’s likely ride time would be in the region of 8 hours and would therefor set off as early as the breakfast buffet hours allowed and would be aiming for minimal stops during the day, whilst I lead a slightly faster paced ride with the intention of completing the course at a “training pace” for the athletes who are signed up for this Ironman in May. The main difference in these approaches was that Emma’s group got round the course by working together as a group, stronger riders helping he others in the very windy conditions that we faced, whereas my group of 5 tended to ride a bit more spread out so that we could use our aero bars and practice pacing certain stretches of the course. Simon suffered a little for this on his road bike…and, as he revealed about 98miles into the day, being his first ever “ton”. We stopped to celebrate the milestone with a photo at the El Griffo winery – which we will all now forever remember as the 100 mile-mark on Ironman day. These little memories do help a lot when it comes to getting through the pains of race day :o)

As i mentioned – the conditions were far from favourable – in fact i don’t think that I’ve experienced wind quite as strong ( and cold) at the tops of Haria and del Rio, and the NNE direction meant that it was against us for most of the first 100km. We did, however enjoy a fast ride down teh LZ1 and most of teh way home.

Stevens group suffered a blow -out early  in the ride – and when i learned of this via a text message,  i assumed that the “curse” of the Ironman Plus had struck again. However, they just happened to be in a position where return to the hotel to change tyres required only a small detour – so whilst Matthew sorted that out, Steven’s posse enjoyed their first coffee stop of the day, in the cafe opposite our hotel! We had a few laughs when we heard the story of their being spotted by some of the hotel’s other guests who remarked; “ is this how far you ride???” They resumed their ambitious route and by riding as a perfectly coordinated bunch, managed to complete the 200km ride in 8 hours – arriving back at the hotel within 10 minutes of Emma’s group, as the sun was setting. Now, that’s making full use of a day !

Not content with 9 hours on the road, a couple of our veteran campers and endurance legends Roz aka the Duracell Bunny, and Linda, her equally unstoppable room-mate, donned run kit and headed out to run for an hour.

Bikes hastily packed and glad-rags brought out, dinner was a treat from the campers – and a cry for red meat – in a lovely local restaurant where we enjoyed simple but delicious food after a week of the “same old” hotel buffet with our multi-plated meals being viewed as little more than fuelling sessions!

We awarded the camp prize to a worthy winner, Matt. Rob managed second place, with Simon and Frank ted for third. We all achieved over 30 hours of training each – with a combined ascent of 173, 76m. The prize for most climbing on camp was awarded to Rob, who has also ridden further than any of us, with 10,940m over 775km in 6 days.

We are very proud of this great bunch of athletes – each with different strengths and levels of experience, but all here with the same “have a try” attitude, supporting one another through a challenging week. We’re always delighted to have people return again from previous year’s camps, but it’s especially  great to have new people come along and see what their “finest age-group competition” can, and will, during a focused and supported training camp.

It’s been a blast, and – OK, I admit it – I’m knackered!

Powerbar  The Tri Touch  Blueseventy  TenPoint Triathlon  Freespeed  Primal Lifestyle  Firefly Recovery  Nuun

Thursday, the penultimate day on camp is always one of the toughest since by this point in the week with long training hours coupled with early morning wake up  calls, most people are beginning to feel tired – and then we get them to do two races! 

We start with the swim race – two laps around our set of buoys with a beach run in between. When we saw that the tide was low this morning  (weird!) and the water very calm, we already knew that the handicaps might be a bit out – those factors always does make it tricky to get swim race handicaps quite accurate and coupled with ability to sight and swim a straight line often results in one or two people with really huge advantage due to improvements in these skills through the camp, different layout of the course enabling easier sighting, and the inclusion of a 150m beach run. Simon, who had probably swum about twice as far as everyone else in the aquathlon, had such a lead that he was diving in for his second lap before the last few off had even been started! Mel normally manages to swim through the field for a close finish, but this year her handicap was so great, on a course shorter and calmer than predicted, that she did not stand a chance of doing that! However, aside from these outliers, the middle bunch of 10 of us all finished within a minute…so for the “average” swimmer, we feel that it was a fair race. It certainly was a hard fought race – as is always the case once the handicapped start system in in place where faster swimmers have to chase, and slower swimmers are chased to be the first on out of the water. Seeing the number of collapsed rubber-clad triathletes lying in the sand at the end of the contest, I once again was impressed at the effort people will put into these races, despite their late -camp weariness! 

Simon won on handicap by such a margin that he felt too embarrassed to accept the win, and Stephen in second place felt the same…so the prize rolled down to David, who will now be the owner of a cool Blueseventy swim suit for finishing third.

The bike routes are relatively short today ( 60-90km) but include the climb up the short but very steep slope of Femes, to make it “interesting” . It’s that sort of 20+% gradient which is challenging no matter what gearing you have fitted for the hilly week – and I’m sure that everyone approaches it with at least a  some degree of fear of failure – but most of us couldn’t even imagine it would be possible to get up it in the “big ring” . Matthew was taking cash bets that he could…and to our amazement ( and certain amount of horror!) he did it, possibly the hardest €40 he ever earned? His quads continued to twitch, as we cheered every one up the last part of the hill, and celebrated over (more) coffee and ice cream in the cafe at the top. Ride leader Emma, who organises several high-profile cycle events and races back in the UK, has offered up a prize of an entry to Mills Hills – a challenging sportif event in Yorkshire – to the camper with the mist ascent logged at the end of the camp. The guys in my group might be glad that i “encouraged” them to ride reps of Femes today whilst waiting for the other groups to arrive after all…

We arrived back at the hotel with about an hour to spare before setting out for a group outing to the beach front in Puerto del Carmen and our final points race of the camp – the handicapped “guess your time” 10k race. The guess-your-time element is for a bit of fun, but also serves as a little demonstration in what you really can do when in the right environment and with sufficient motivation – people are almost always massively pessimistic about what they’ll run when they base their guess on how their legs feel, rather than having confidence in their endurance. Of course there are always a few exceptions, usually coming fro those who went super-hard on the aquathlon early in the week, and continued to crank it everyday on the bike – 10km in the heat of the afternoon sure feels like a long, long way when “the wheels have come off” (or even if they haven’t for that matter!) – however the 2 lap out-and -back run enables us to see one another, targets or pursuers, at several turn -around points, and everyone offers up lots of encouragement which makes it more fun. I was placed pretty much in the middle of the rankings, with Brian 2 -seconds behind and Greg 17 after him. My strategy was to run as close to flat out  as my legs could manage for the first 1km or so and hope that they did not have the nerve to come with. At the 2.5km turn around, I saw that this had worked, and I was also gaining on those ahead. Steven egged-me on by suggestion that I could actually pass everyone and win the race..but I was most concerned  to stay in front of Matt who appeared to be closing in on me every time I saw him! It was a hard run and I’m pleased to say that in the last few kms I seemed to get a little more lead over him…however since he did pass everyone else for second place, he once again takes the win.

The prize for this is a pair of Vibram Five-Fingers from our sponsors Primal Lifestyle – this will be a new experience for him, but asa  light footed runner in minimalist shoes anyway, I’m sure he will enjoy them.

For the fastest athlete to win on handicap is a true demonstration of a depth of talent, an ability to judge his efforts just right, and to “bring it” when  in competition calls for it. Matt has impressed the whole group, and most especially me as his coach, by doing just that this week.

However – his 10k time prediction was pretty appalling, being over 2minutes on the pessimistic side!

Best guesses of the day were from Heather and Brian – both just 5 seconds off their actual run times. That’s the closest that anyone has ever predicted, and for two people to do so is quite amazing really. Fortunately, TenPoint Triathlon have given us two prizes to offer  – a running technique assessment and coaching session and also a pedal spindle fitting session so we are able to award prized to both of them :o)

Powerbar  The Tri Touch  Blueseventy  TenPoint Triathlon  Freespeed  Primal Lifestyle  Firefly Recovery  Nuun

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