A Weekend of Triathlon Training With TheEnduranceCoach.com
Now that I have bought my IronMan UK ticket (Bolton 31st July!!!), along with a bike, helmet, shoes, bottle cage, cycle computer, tyres, tubes, saddle bag, pump, gloves, jersey, bib, socks, glasses, hat, turbo trainer and about a million and one other seemingly trivial but very essential bits of kit, All I need to do now is get outdoors and get some decent training under my belt.
Nick (a mate I am doing the IronMan with) and myself decided that if we are going to actually finish this IronMan then we are going to do it properly. That means proper structured training plans carefully crafted from talking to as many coaches and triathletes as possible and learning as much as we can about the sport along the way (there is so much to learn!)
Not knowing even how to change a tire properly, we decided that the best thing to do was to attend a weekend triathlon training camp where we would be able to ask as many questions as we could think of and would be training under the supervision of experienced triathletes and triathlon coaches. Nick did a spot of research and all too soon I found myself driving along the M6 to Cumbria last Friday.
The Endurance Coach (theendurancecoach.com) run training camps in Cumbria every few months where dozens of triathletes of all level converge to train and mix with a group of likeminded people. Nick and myself were probably smack bang in the middle in terms of ability as January’s camp was made up of a range of die hard IronMan finishers (complete with tattoos and some sweet looking bikes!) and lots of complete beginners who hadn’t set foot on a bike for several years. The base camp was made up of several lodges arranged around a main cabin located a few hundred meters up a dirt track just outside of Ambleside in Cumbria and after a short introduction to my fellow attendees, everyone decided to grab an early night in anticipation of the next few days training schedule.
An Icy Base Camp At 7am Saturday Morning
I was up at 7am and by god it was cold! Despite having three layers on as well as gloves and thermals, by the time we set off for the main Saturday morning cycle I couldn’t feel my hands. As we picked up some speed this lack of feeling spread to my wrists and most of my face as the thermometer dipped below minus five degrees….trust me it felt more like minus twenty! The group split into two groups according to ability. Nick sped off with the fast group and opted to stick with the beginner group as the furthest I had cycled before was 50km. In hindsight we probably should have asked one of the coached to take Nick and me out separately as I was too fast for the slow group and Nick was hard pushed to keep up with the fast group. At least my group was lucky with regards to punctures and breakdowns though. I was the only person to pick up a puncture on a steep downhill close to the Cumbrian coast line whereas Nick’s group suffered from a total of eight mechanical breakdowns in the short four hours that they were away from base camp. Seriously, eight completely unrelated breakdowns including snapped gear levers, and punctures – Now that is just unlucky! Nick somehow completely shredded his tyre about 100m away from base camp and so had to ride to Ambleside to pick up a new tyre and some spare tubes before the ride had ever started! In between breakdowns, Nick’s group managed to cover some serious mileage and finished on 50miles whereas my group only managed to cover 60km in an extra hour! The ride really highlighted how rubbish I am on a bike. I was speeding up the hills (mainly due to my three rung gears – ooops!) but really struggled on the flats and could barely keep up when we started practicing some drafting! Luckily for me we kept the pace pretty steady as the shear amount of ice on the road meant that is would have been death to ride at any kind of speed on the downhill sections.
Me and Nick After The Saturday Morning Cycle
Back at base camp on Saturday afternoon, Nick and his group decided to head out on a cheeky run whilst they waited for my group to get back, and then it was time to hit the local pool in Ambleside for some swim coaching. The Endurance Coach coaches filmed us for later video analysis of our strokes and then gave us an hour’s tuition on proper open water form and style. I always thought that I was a decent swimmer until last weekend but the coaches quickly highlighted several areas of improvement such as low leg position and high head position that I needed to work on. Nick attracted a few laughs when the coaches proclaimed that he had the worst case of ‘snake hips’ that he has ever seen (when your body snaked laterally from side to side with every stroke) and was told that he needed 12 months of coaching to correct it. After putting some of the pointers into practice this morning in my local Windsor swimming pool, I have complete faith in the coaches as I managed to cover a eighty lengths in a faster time that I have ever swam before (despite complete shattering myself!), but I reckon Nick and me will have pretty decent strokes by the time of the IronMan in July.
Sunday was the real fun day of the weekend! After another very stiff and early start the coaches led a two hour fell run over one of the mountains in the lake district (possibly Helvellyn?!) which was quite possibly one of the most painful and thoroughly enjoyable runs that I have ever been on. For those of you that have never heard of fell running, it essentially involves picking the biggest hill/mountain you can find and running up it. Your legs burn after the first hundred meters of climb and keep burning until you are sitting in your car at the finish line a few hours later. Some of the sections of the fell run were so steep that you actually had to scramble rather than run and it was so cold on top of the mountain that there was snow covering one side of the slope! Going down was much easier than going up but Monday morning I woke up with pains in muscles that I didn’t even know that I had and my ankles and knees still haven’t recovered!
We Finally Reached the Top After An Hour of Running
All in all the weekend was a great success and would have been worth the money even without the training just for the characters who attended. It was great to meet so many endurance athletes from all walks of life and hear about their various races, training techniques and numerous triathlon experiences. Marc who runs the camps along with his fellow coaches have an insane amount of knowledge between and their tips will no doubt make the difference between Nick and me finishing the IronMan on July 31st or failing massively! A big thank you to everyone who attended the Base Camp and the guys from The Endurance Coach for a massively enjoyable and informative weekend.
Bring on the IronMan!
For more information on training camps from The Endurance Coach, see their website – http://www.theendurancecoach.com/
