Tuscon Tri Camp - Day 1

The agenda is pretty tight, so getting on my computer to write a post has been a challenge. I'll try to keep them brief so I can do this pretty regularly.

I'm currently chilling on the bed half way through day two, and I am pretty zonked. The tough part of the day is behind me, so I should be feeling fine soon, but I wanted to write about day one before jumping ahead.

I flew in a day early (Tues night) because flights looked packed, so I had all of Wed morning to my self. Check in was at 11am over at the TriSports store. I have spent a few thousand dollars with TriSports.com over the last couple of years. I bought my bike box from them in '07, and my Zipp 606 wheel set, 3 tubie tires, and some other things last year. It is the best online store. Turns out they are located in Tuscon across the street from our hotel, and they are hosting us for this weekend. We met the owner Seton last night, he rode with us on Day 2 and gave us the nickel tour after dinner last night on day 1. Cool guy, amazing outfit he runs. They are in a 25k sq foot facility complete with a warehouse, show room, endless pool, kids corner, chill lounge, internet cafe, offices for 45 people, a photo shoot room where Triathlete Magazine was there shooting a new Quintana Roo bike that Trisports had on hand, apparently only one of ten in the world. It was amazing. TriSports runs great deals, has good prices, etc so buy from them the next time you need something. I'll be getting my next bike from them through their fly and buy program. They've got every bike you could imagine, except Specialized (which Seton said they turned down last month).


Anyhow, we met at Trisports, had lunch in the multi purpose room, then geared up for our first ride of the camp. The terrain was beautiful once we got out of town. Desert, mountains, cactus.

The ride was called Gates Pass, and while I don't have any ride data at my finger tips that I can load to the site, it was a 38 mile ride with 1,800 feet of climbing, and it peaked out at the top of the pass at just under 3,000 ft.

Believe me when I tell you, the last 5-7 minutes of the climb which lasted for about 30 mins was without a shadow of a doubt the steepest thing I have ever been up. I downloaded my power data last night, and during the last 7 mins of the climb, my HR averaged 177 (my max is 186) it got up to 184 for about 60 seconds at the top, I averaged nearly 300 watts, and I was going 6.6 mph. For once in my life, I wasn't sure I could keep the pedals turning over. And I actually did much better than most all of the other riders.

Here are some photos, although believe me when I say they don't do this thing justice.

This is the top of the pass looking down the side we'd just come up. That void over the edge is where things began.

This is the steepest part at the top that was hell climbing. See the little cars struggling up it?


This photo is from the same spot as the one above, but just shows a little further down the road.


And here is my self portrait at the top

The rest of the ride was pretty tame. Of course it was downhill quite a bit which was nice, but we rode through downtown Tuscon around 4p and that was a bit stressful with the traffic.

As we left the top of the pass, we had a hill to bomb down, and decided to regroup just 2.5 miles down the hill so we weren't strung out all over the place. I averaged 31mph down the 2.5 miles, and didn't pedal once. I actually was on the brakes most of the way. Some of the turns were harry and the roads are very spotty. Nice some time, terrible others. I wasn't looking to get launched off my bike by a bump. Here is a photo of the side of the pass we went down.

Dinner last night was great. Mexican food, Fat Tire beer. Funny thing was that after dinner, we had a presentation by Bob Seebohar who is an elite coach and sports nutritionist. His claims to fame are the coach to Sarah Haskins (2008 USA Triathlon Olympian placing 11th in Beijing) as well as serving as the nutritionist to USA Triathlon in Beijing. He planned all of the meals while the team was together on foreign soil before heading to Beijing, and while there.

Any how, Bob railed on our dinner after we'd already eaten it giving us all a good guilt trip. It really wasn't that bad. He was a very cool guy (rode with us on day 2) and had lots to say. He is very big on training slower, changing the way your body metabolizes energy stores, and switching your energy systems to consume more fat stores (which you have about 180k-200k calories of) during training than glycogen stores (which you have 1.5k-2k of). Common sense stuff, but he had some interesting data on testing he'd done, and some ideas on how to put it in practice.

After the nutrition discussion, we got the nickle tour of TriSports from Seton I spoke of earlier, then it was bed time.

A good day in all. The other campers are all very good people. There is a pretty wide range of abilities but I'm on the top end of the spectrum so it gives me the opportunity to push if I want, or sit back and be more social.

More later.