IM Chatt Camp Debrief
Hey everyone! Great weekend with the team that made it to training camp in Chattanooga. While we were short a key member of the coaching staff, Coach Rich tried to fill Riley's EN jersey and we soldiered on
Thursday evening Coach R provided us with the Four Keys discussion.
Friday morning we were wheels down from the hotel to ride the entire bike course. You'll all be happy to know that you will get your money's worth with this course as it measured 116 miles! The course takes you out of town with about 11 miles of "admin". As Coach R says, your riding with your bucket of chicken. Then you roll into some pretty good rollers, nothing crazy but some of them will challenge your heart rate/watts and it will be important to flatten them out. When you make the right turn onto cove you will find this to be filled with false flats ended with a longish climb. Rich will have some good advice how to ride this with your percent grade indicator on your bike computer. When you turn onto Hog Jowl, you are rewarded for all your work on Cove with some fast downs. As you come out of Chicamauga you climb 700ft in 2.8 miles. It is a gradual climb/false flat but is no joke and will be not much fun on the second loop. Again you are rewarded with a very fast descent to start the second loop. Unless you are a cycling beast, you will need to use your small ring on occasion to flatten this course.
Friday evening we put toothpicks in our eyes and listened to Coach R for the course debrief and discussed ways to go out and execute the course the next day. Then we ate and ate and ate and dragged our sorry butts to bed.
Saturday morning 7am we drove out to where the loop started as no one wanted to repeat the admin stick through town. Some did one loop, some did two loops and we ran off the bike. It was hot, hot, hot!!!!! Hopefully it will not be that hot on race day.
Saturday evening more discussions on day 2 bike and run execution.
Sunday morning 7am we walked down to transition and then ran the course. The course starts off with a big uphill about .25 miles.It might be a good idea to walk it since we are trying to keep our heart rates low right off the bike. Some of us went over the bridge and ran the north shore to check out the hills and some followed the course as it will go on race day. The hills are no joke folks. These will be tough at mile 10 and will be brutal at mile 20. You get to run through a golf course neighborhood which is pretty and you can see the river. It does have street lights but I don't know how much light you'll have if you are going to be out there after the sun sets.
Overall the course is really scenic and I think y'all will enjoy it!
Additionally, I did the swim last week and it is going to be fast. The water has a greenish tint but it's very clear. No vegetation either.
I enjoyed very much all of you who attended. It was great meeting everyone and I'm so impressed with the ability that this team has!
Those of you who attended please fill in the gaps to my debrief!
Comments
Hi Team! I also attended camp and had a blast. I really gained some much needed pearls of wisdom from our trusty coach and gained a lot of self confidence for riding the course. PLEASE read Amy's wrap up below for specifics so I don't repeat the same stuff.
I'd like to make a comment about our super duper Endurance Nation training camps. I really think anyone who attends these camps would tremendously benefit. Yes, it is helpful for those front of the packers, but as a mid to back of the packer, I got TONS of valuable information and support from camp. Yes, we only see wattage quoted by the big guns on the dashboard, but that doesn't mean the back of the packers shouldn't be using power meters or trying to improve our aero position as best we can. Coach Rich said this weekend the longer you are out on the bike course the greater benefit you get from being aero. And the longer you are out on the course not paying attention to your work output (power or heart rate) the more harm you are doing to yourself at mile 18.
We had fast people, slow people, injured people, young people, old people from all walks of life this weekend. I am sure everyone who attended would agree that we all left there as a little bit smarter people.
To my fellow campers, I enjoyed meeting all of you and I look forward to our big ironman weekend in September!
Just want to say I had a great time and enjoyed meeting all of you and talking about our favorite subject...triathlon!
As I've told some of you, I am doing Ironman Augusta the same day y'all will be doing IMChoo.
I attended the camp to get some good training, meet some of the team and Coach Rich, and soak in all the EN mojo.
I will be doing my first IM next year at Lake Placid.
Good luck to everyone - you know what to do, you just have to execute now!
A great gathering of wonderful people, strong athletes. I am glad that we had the chance to spend the weekend getting smarter and practicing...a lot! Good luck in Augusta and I look forward to seeing you again soon. Maybe a fun ride in the fall?
Jim
Again nothing that changes our plan.