Big Training Block (Part 2) Blowing Rock Tri Camp

The view during the ride

Before I knew it, it was time to leave for the triathlon camp in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Mary first mentioned about the camp back in January. I was looking forward to it. Karen always talked about the epic weekend. She thought it was awesome. She went with the Iron team last year. The camp started on Thursday. Katie and I drove up on Wednesday. Leaving at 10AM from here was a great idea. It gave us time to eat lunch, relax a bit and get ready for 4 days of multiple workouts. We arrived at Zap Fitness around 3PM. The drive was pretty easy. Blue Ridge Mountain was pretty. The weather was pretty cool, around 60F. I wasn't going to bring a jacket but I was glad I did. We were the first ones to arrive. A couple of hours later, Karen, Lauren, Mary and Mike came. I had no idea how long we were going to ride tomorrow. Mary wouldn't tell me. I was begging a bit since I messed up on nutrition last week, so I needed to know exactly how many bottles, gel and solid I had to prepare. The goal for tomorrow's ride was to nail the nutrition. It wasn't a great feeling when the only thing that you could think of was, when this ride was going to end, while you still had 30 miles to go. Katie told me they rode 6 hours last year, so I was mixing my bottles with 6 hours in mind. That meant I had to consume at least 1200-1300 calories.

We met up with Susan and Sarah at an Italian restaurant for dinner. The food was great. I was so hungry and ate a big plate of pasta and meatballs. Right after dinner, they hurried back to the cabin. They talked about Mary's brand new bike. I knew they were going to do something evil because they were giggling and looked so excited.

Marking Mary's brand new custom bike

On Thursday morning, I got up at 5AM. We had to be ride-ready by 6.30AM. From the cabin to the start of the ride was less than 5 miles away but the climb was steep and long. We decided to drive to the start. The plan for the day was to ride for 6 hours. From the start, all of us would ride to the south for 45 minutes, turn around and go back to the start, then ride to the north for 45 minutes, turn around and ride back to the start. Repeat. That summed up to 6 hours.

  

I enjoyed the ride. Pretty much I rode by myself almost the entire time. I rode with Susan the last loop.  Look at the view on the background. Gorgeous! Climbing the last hill after riding 80 plus miles was a torture. As I was climbing, there was a hiker that oddly stroke a conversation with us. He asked if I've done this ride before. I said no. He told me that I would be sore tomorrow. Thanks, bud! Had he known what Mary planned for us the next day

After the ride, we went back to Zap fitness and ate lunch. I tried to take a nap after that but didn't have enough time because it was time to swim. I brought Mio Energy with me, so I was drinking that the whole time. I needed an extra dose of caffeine. Mary and Mike took turn taking a video of us swimming. They would review them and gave us feedback the next day. We ended the day by going to dinner separately. I just wanted to go to bed. I didn't care about dinner. Since I was carpooling with 4 other people, I couldn't do that. We went to Mellow Mushrooms. It was good but their service was not fast. I finally went to bed around 10PM.

Day 2 was a long run. It was 3 hours long. The great thing was, after the run, we didn't have any other workout. Awesome. We drove to Cone Manor. It had a bunch of trails. Everybody was going separate ways. Some went up and some went down to Bass Lake. I was with the latter group. Again, I ran by myself the entire time. Running alone didn't bother me. I've been doing that since January. I had a bottle with me and left another one at the beginning of trail. The trail was quite, serene but it was rocky. I hate running on an uneven surface. Plus, there was a lot of horse manure on the trail. Apparently there was a horse barn and people would ride their horses on the running trail. Bass Lake was beautiful. I think that was the only area that was flat. Too bad the trail around the lake was only a mile or so. I wish it was longer. I ran on the maze and circled the lake a couple of times, then decided to run up. Even though I was very careful to watch where I was stepping, I mildly twisted both ankles. It wasn't bad but I was nervous. I got back to the top, went to bathroom and refilled my drink. Crap! I still had an hour. I had no choice besides running back to the Bass Lake to kill time. Running back to the top was awful. At this time, every incline was more painful than before. I had to walk several times. Finally I made it back to the parking lot. Half of the group were already there.

Cone Manor Park

After the run, I went to the creek by the place we stayed and soaked my legs in icy water. It was cold. I accompanied by Lauren, Scott and fish, that tried to eat our toes. We also had a stretching session that was led by Mary.

My hamstring... my poor hamstring...

In the afternoon, we had a one on one swim video review. Everybody had homework to do. Swimming was the biggest challenge for most of us. It didn't matter how good you were or how long you had been swimming. There was always room for improvement. Dinner at Zap Fitness was awesome. We had salmon with mustard sauce, green beans, red quinoa and rice and caramel raisin oatmeal cookies. Yum!

Day 3 schedule was 3 hour ride and 1 hour run in the morning and followed by 1 hour swim in the afternoon. Honestly it was like a ground hog day from day 1. The view was gorgeous. I rode by myself the whole time. You were either up or down. After the turn around, I decided to get off the bike and took some pictures.

At the via duct

After finished the run, I took a different trail to run. I ran to Flat Top mountain. It wasn't flat at all but the view was amazing. I could see the city of Boone or maybe Blowing Rock from the top.

I took less than an hour nap after I was done. It was so hard to get up but it was swim time. Instead of swimming for an hour, we did some dry land exercise for a good 15-20 minutes. Some planks, crunches, Superman, basically abs and back strengthening.

That night we went to dinner at a local restaurant. The food was good. Then, we got back to Zap Fitness and had wine and ice cream (these were left over from the previous night). To replace the amount of calories that we burnt, we did eat a lot.

Day 4 agenda was a one hour ride, packed up, drove to a lake in Tennessee and head home to Atlanta. The open water swim was my least favorite part because there was really no safe area to swim, too many boats and jet skis around. There were too many geese. You could tell from their poop on the beach. We still managed to swim continuously for 50 minutes. We said our goodbyes to other teammates and coaches. It's been a great training up in the mountains of North Carolina.

Driving home