Well once again I'm apologising for the distinct lack of updates to this blog recently!
2015 came in with style in on that great relaxed12-day camp at Trisports Lanzarote. We had a real mix of people come and go through that period - with wide ranging levels of experience, fitness and alcohol tolerance. This made that particular camp very varied with Daz and I doing our best to accommodate the needs of each athlete, most of whom were primarily there for a low-key training week in the sunshine over the festive period. It was then back to the UK for a month...i grit my teeth ad bore it, spent plenty of hours with my housemates on the rollers and turbo-ing, but just ticking over really with very little real training focus, until it was time to pack up my bags and bike for a return to Lanzarote for a couple more camps. My approach this year has been to deliberately start my own training and racing campaign later in the year - I've learned enough hard lessons in early season races to know that I don't want to show up on another race line exhausted and underprepared, so through until April/May time its all about my coaching work, organising my races and setting up a new swim session on Exmoor, and working camps.
The first of which was a new camp for this year, working with a Dutch Super-Endurance triathlete Josta, who I met last year on Epic Woman camp. Josta and I have similar views on what makes great camp within an all-female environment, and her involvement with the Dutch team WomEndurance encouraged her to partner with me in setting this one up. We did allow a couple of guys to join us too for this one, and no, we did not make them wear skirts (although they assured us that they were willing to do so!) or expect them to keep up ;o)
We blogged each day from camp, read them here
Intro
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Following this intense camp I'd scheduled myself a week off to recover before starting work with Steven on our big EverydayTraining camp ... I managed to get a few days of work helping Daz at TriSports Lanzarotewith a few beginners, which actually proved to be a great way to recover as well as spending a bit more time with TriSports (and getting a good look at the Dutch Team for Talent boys who were also staying there that week in action!)
The EDT camp Lanza is always a massive week of training and often at quite a solid pace. I admit that having had such a laid back approach to my own training through the winter, i was a little apprehensive - especially knowing that Steven's preps for Ironman South Africa were going well and he was in awesome shape. We had a full camp of 20 athletes for this, our 5th year, and 6 staff. We returned to our 'usual' hotel who looked after us brilliantly...it probably was one of the best years on camp yet - a great group with some real characters and, to my surprise and delight, I found that the past 4 weeks spent doing lots of low intensity long stuff with the Dutch Ladies and beginners had gotten me into pretty good shape too! So, I was really able to enjoy some fast riding at times, set a PB up Tabeyasco, completed the camp and smashed pretty much all the handicap "races". I admit that I was a bit pathetic at the end of camp partying though...
We blogged daily from this camp too:
Arrivals
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Wrap up
Its now almost a full month since we got back. That month took a fair bit of recovering from .. the time has been well spent doing coaching and training courses and work with the Tri Club...Easter brought with it sunshine which has prompted me to finally get my race season planned out, and training underway!!
