One of our favorite aspects of our coaching business is private and group training camps. We love the interaction with athletes. We get to help athletes work through mental and physical barriers in a safe way (with a watchful eye) as well as giving athletes a beautiful playground to show off their strengths. It's been a while since our last private camp and I completely forgot how mentally and physically exhausting and incredibly rewarding these camps are. Now that we got a taste of it, we are looking forward to our next (and first "mini" group) camp of 2021 on the 31st.
Since Karel and I have been seeking adventures on our road and gravel bikes, we decided to dust off the tri bikes from the garage. Although we both have a tri bike set-up on our trainers, we haven't rode our Ventum tri bikes outside since the Xtreme Tri in November. It was a bit awkward at first (especially with the howling wind) but with each mile, we felt more comfortable in the aero position. We did a recon of the route that we would be doing on day 2 of the private training camp as Karel had never seen those roads before (I discovered it with one of the
GVL WBL group rides but Karel was doing a group gravel ride that day). It's incredible that after nearly seven years in Greenville, we are still finding new bike friendly, beautiful routes to ride on!
On Friday morning, I joined our master group for a "fun" 33 x 100 main set. It actually went by rather quickly. Karel did an EC Fit strength session at home and then met me at the aquatic center.
We reserved a lane for our campers/athletes Jodi and Kelly from 9-10am on Fri and 7-8am on Saturday at the Westside Aquatic Center. Since Jodi and Kelly have different swim abilities, Karel worked with Kelly (adult onset swimmer) and I worked with Jodi (grew up swimming). We focused on technique as well as putting skills into action with a main set.
On Friday, we headed out to one of our go-to routes for cycling. It's a route that we use when we want to do an EZ spin but also shake out the legs with a few punchy and rolling hills. It's also a great route for working one-on-one with athletes because we can work on a lot of bike handling skills. We did a few loops of a ~3 mile course and I worked with Jodi on her skills and Karel worked with Kelly. Then we finished the ride with applying those skills to the rest of the route. After the ride, I took the ladies for a 20-minute run on our rolling neighborhood terrain. Both of the ladies did a great job on the first day of camp.
After a good night of rest for us all, Jodi and Kelly met at us at the aquatic center for another swim and then after they got some food and cleaned up at their Airbnb, they met us at our place for our endurance ride. The ride included a recon of the ~5 mile loop that we then had them do for a "time trial" - giving a strong steady effort. This loop is by Jones Gap and has a bit of everything - a steady climb, a downhill, and a long stretch of road with gentle curves that you can stay in the aerobars. It was a cold morning to start but we all warmed up quickly (and overdressed!). After the ride, we went for another 20-minute run. We did the same route as Friday as I wanted the ladies to feel the difference of running with a bit more fatigue in the legs compared to the day prior. They both did great and we finished off another great day of training with a recovery smoothie that I made in our home.
Because the ladies had a 5ish drive home on Sunday, we needed to start the workouts early on Sunday. But because it was rather cold to start the morning, we decided on an interval trainer workout (~45 minutes) in Karel's fit studio. While it was a great workout for them to warm their legs up, it also provided great value to us as we give a lot of very specific trainer workouts and this gave Karel an opportunity to make sure Jodi and Kelly were executing the workouts correctly while on the trainer.
While they were biking indoors, I went outside for an EZ run to warm myself up before we all ran together for an endurance run. The sun was shining and the weather was perfect for our 1-hour run filled with hills and mountain views.
After wrapping up the weekend with an espresso and some snacks, the ladies hit the road for their long drive back home. Thanks Jodi and Kelly for taking time out of your busy family, life, work schedule to spend time with us in Greenville!
