Saturday, March 10, 2012

Triathlon Canada High Performance Paratri Training Camp, 2012

I was lucky enough to be invited to the first training camp of its kind for Tri Canada, the winter paratriathlon training camp in Clermont FL. We were sent the schedule a couple of weeks prior to the camp and the volume was huge. Approximately 33 hours of training for me, over 7.5 days, including 30,000 yards of swimming, 15+ hours of riding, and 4.5 hours of running. I was very excited about attending the camp and spending my time doing all the training with no other distractions.
I arrived at the Orlando airport the night before camp was to start and after a night at the Kissimmee FL Ho Jo's, I was picked up by our coach Vince, and a representative from Tri Canada, Larry McMahon. Larry's son, Brent, is one of Canada's elite triathletes and may be representing Canada at the London games this year.
We stopped at Panda Express because the boys were hungry. We had a run scheduled later in the day and I needed some calories so I joined in. I shouldn't have. We stopped at Walmart, shopped for the basics of food, got to our rental, unloaded then suited up for a run.
We were only scheduled for 30-40 minutes easy but we got talking and I ended up going out a lot faster than I was used to and as I said earlier, I shouldn't have eaten at Panda. My gut started acting up about 2 miles in and I stopped a couple of times because I thought I was going to barf..... TMI? Anyway, our time was about 35 minutes but that included a little walking to shake the feeling I had.
After the run, we had dinner, talked a little about the camp, and then headed to bed. Another athlete came in later that night, Grant, an above the knee amputee, who I have known since my first World Championships in 2008.
Day 2 was a late start due to Grant's late arrival. We were on the slate to swim in the morning and ride in the afternoon. We checked into the National Training Center in Clermont and did a 3000m long course swim. I had not been in a 50m pool for many years and I was really looking forward to it. At least I was until mid way through the swim when I started getting very fatigued. My longest swim in a couple of years was 2000m and usually I do a main set of 3-4x250m with a warm up and cool down. This swim was 800m warm up, 800m drills (I learned a few things about my stroke that were very helpful), 8x100m, and 400m cool down. Arms were BEAT! Shoulders a little sore but nothing really bad.
After swim we had lunch, loaded up our bikes, and headed to Lake Lousia State park. The roads there are very quiet and we were able to do 45km doing 5 laps. It has a couple of hills but very short and not very steep but it was a good first time out for Grant and Vince, neither of who had an out door ride for a while.
We had a great dinner courtesy of Vince and a glass of wine to celebrate the first full day of camp. Afterwards I regretted having the wine because I did not sleep very well considering the workouts we had for the day.
Day 3 was an early start as we had 3 workouts scheduled. We were on our bikes at the NTC by 845am and headed to Lake Minneola. We had about 35 minutes on the road before we started our intervals. 10 x 1 minute with 1 minute rest. After that, we had about a 10 minute rest and did 6 more intervals. That took a lot out of me and we had a steady 5-7 minute climb to finish off to get back to the NTC. As soon as we were off the bikes, we headed in for another 3000m swim. This one was painful for me. It took the entire warm up for my shoulders to loosen up. I do not ever recall feeling this bad from swimming. Our swim set today, 800m warm up with 300m easy, 100m hard times 2. Our main set today, 40x50m. 16x50m on 55 seconds, 3 easy, 1 hard. 12x50m on 60 seconds, 2 easy, 1 hard. 8x50m 1 easy 1 hard. 4x50m all hard. Ouch. My 200m cool down was almost entirely on my back kicking as my arms had nothing left. After an extra long shower we went home for lunch and waited for the arrival of our last athlete, Jenny, from Ottawa. We had a couple hours off before our run which was an easy 40 min with 6x100m strides at the end.
I made it through day 3 and am looking forward to tomorrow: Swim in the morning, 3500m, a track run session for 55 minutes, then an hour on the bike to cool down. I have never done a track workout before so this should be fun.
As my boy Vince says, 'a demain'. Until tomorrow.

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