My First Training Camp!

I'm very behind on my blogs so this will be short recap of my first Triathon Training Camp (Victoria Day Long Weekend - over 2 weeks ago!).  This is my third season in Triathlon, my second season hanging with the Toronto Triathlon Club, and the first season where I went to the Collingwood Training Camp and now I'm just dying to plan another trip up to Collingwood to ride!

We left the City late Friday morning, with 4 bikes and 4 athletes, we made pretty quick time up north to the Blue Mountains Chalets.

yeah!  All the bikes made it!

We got ourselves unpacked and settled and then ready for ride #1!  It was just an easy 40km with about 140m of elevation gain.  The scenery was breathtaking and I was so excited about 2 more days of riding.

Saturday morning we headed out for a 90k ride and it was amazing.  With over 1,000 meters of elevation gain and topping out at 65kph on the amazing descents!  This was a kind of riding I had never experienced before.  While I felt great on the ride, I did struggle on one of the huge descents as I went into the decent in my aerobars and was unable to get out of them to get my hands on my breaks because I was going so fast and the crosswinds were blowing me around.  I won't lie, there were times I was scared and thinking a crash at this speed would be life altering.

The club heading out on Saturday

I don't have a great way to show you the elevation so here's a screen shot from my strava account.

Saturday afternoon was spent in major recovery mode, eating good food, talking all things triathlon, soaking our legs in the freezing cold pool and a yoga session with my awesome new TTC friend Duncan Parviainen.  BEST YOGA SESSION EVER!

inversion after cold soak

BEST YOGA EVER

Sunday morning Barry and I opted out of the early morning drive to Wasaga Beach where we had a 7am pool time.  It was nice to sleep in and have a quiet morning in the chalet.  The swimmers returned and we headed out for our ride up Pretty River.  I had been anticipating something horrible and was happy to know it wasn't nearly as much climbing as the Saturday Ride.  The last kilometer of the Pretty River climb was a time trial which was being used for our little team triathlon challenge (more on that later).

almost everyone from camp heading out to climb Pretty River

Pretty River Climb and the Amazing Decent on 91

According to my Garmin site I topped out at 73kph, but strava says 71.6kph (so bizarre given they both grab the data from my Garmin 910) ... in any case I was FLYING down that decent and with lessons learned from the day before, I was much more confident and steady on my bike.  

For fun, we had  little team triathlon challenge.  We were randomly (there is some debate here) placed in teams of three.  The best swim (a 100m time trial taken at the Sunday morning swim), bike (the last kilometer of the pretty river climb) and run (the last kilometer of your run off the bike on Sunday) times were taken and  each member had to contribute.  I was on a team with Tara (the leader of the camp) and Dushan.  They had both swam that morning with great times.  Dushan killed the bike time trial and posted the faster time overall.  So that left me with the run - so after the ride on Sunday, even though I hadn't run in weeks and was struggling with a hamstring issues.  I ran 1 km - in 4:20.  So in the end, my team won the challenge!

Sunday night we had a team dinner in the Village of Blue Mountains to celebrate the camp.  That night we packed up and headed home.  We got home in the wee hours of the morning but it was nice to wake up on the holiday Monday morning and spend the day relaxing with the kids.

I loved the training camp and I cannot wait to go again next year and maybe even try to squeeze in a week long camp to Arizona or Mt. Tremblant next year!