Tuscon Tri Camp - Day 2

Day 2 is in the books. A pretty full day for sure. We started off the morning with a 5:50am wake up call, 6:00am breakfast, and were on the bikes at 7:00am to roll out for our first ride.

This ride was called Colossal Cave and it was a pretty good one. 50.5 miles, with 1,800 ft of climbing, with a summit at just over 3,500 feet. It was a much more gradual climb compared to yesterday's mammoth steepness. In fact, there was no paramount spot where you knew you were over the top, you just all of a sudden realized you were done going up and were flying back down the back side.

Bob Seebohar and Seton Clagget who I spoke of yesterday joined us for our ride. They were very strong cyclists who kept the pace up for most of the day.

Two gripes about the rides around here, and when I do the day 3 review, I'll really hammer on the later. First, all of our rides start out with about 45 minutes of slower riding with lots of stops at lights as we make our way out of the city. Once we are out there, it is great, but getting there pretty much stinks. Second, the rodes here for the most part suck. Lots of pot holes, cracks, bumps, glass, etc. On a tri bike, you really feel all of that stuff so the wear and tear on the hands, shoulders, and taint are gruesome at times.

Here are a few photos from day 2's ride.

The highlight of the ride for me was riding through a giant airplane graveyard. There were thousands of planes. Mostly military, but some commercial. Airplanes go to the desert when they are in permanent or temporary storage because the dry air help to preserve them. There is protocol for maintaining a temp stored aircraft, and less of permanently retired planes, but all of them could probably be pulled from the desert, restored and flown. I took as many pictures as I could from the bike, but seeing it in person was a great experience.

After the ride, we went straight off the bike and on to a 30 minute brick run. Because I'd rolled back in to town with the Bob and a couple of the California based coaches, I ended up doing the run with them. Bad idea, they were flying and I had to hoof it to keep up. I swear, the 50 mile ride was easier than 30 minutes with these guys. When they weren't chatting up a storm, they were giving me critiques on my running form, and I was just trying to survive the pace and the heat. We ran by the Arizona Diamondbacks spring training facility but it was apparent they were away on Thursday.

I was the fourth or fifth person to finish the run, and saw most of the rest of the campers heading out about 20-25 minutes behind me.

I was thinking to myself that I was glad to be finishing early, because for the rest of the day, half of the camp would be doing a swim analysis in the endless pool/flume over at Trisports (the half I was in) in 30 minute appointments scattered throughout the day starting at noon, and running to 3p. the other half would be doing Bike Skills. I was made the sacrificial lamb who had to do the swim at noon. The coaches' logic was that over my swimming career, I would have the most experience with swimming on a full stomach, and since the schedule only showed 60 minutes between the end of the run, and my appointment, they knew it was going to be tight.

What they didn't know was that the ride went long, and I finished 30 minutes before I was supposed to meet for my appointment. I had time to wolf down half of my sandwich, my potato salad, and the next thing I know, I was swimming.

The swim analysis was cool. I'd never swam in a flume before, and seeing myself in the mirrors placed right below me, and ahead at a 45 degree angle provided a new perspective for me. I'd got a DVD of my swim from above and below water, so I'll see if I can figure out how to load it here.

After that, I was pretty much whipped, and headed back to the room to crash.

At 4p, we met again over at Trisports to go over some stretch training. It was led by Bob Seebohar, and it wasn't what you'd think. We did allot of neuromuscular exercises to help train your muscles to fire correctly. It was allot of balance and core work, but we didn't do a single crunch.

After that, we wolfed down a pasta dinner and listened to Bob talk about Recovery Nutrition. Bob had allot of interesting things to say about nutrition that flies in the face of basically everything you have read or heard before. He is very much a believer of less is more, especially if you are trying to improve your body composition. I think we get swept up by all of the marketing hype around training and recovery nutrition to the point that we consume too much product. You can learn allot about him at his site I linked to yesterday.

That concluded our very long day, and I was in bed by 9pm.

Day 3 has an even longer ride on the docket. I realized today that Day 2 was the longest ride of the year for me, and I would reset that mark on day 3, and again on day 4. Oh day 4, don't even want to think about it.