If you have not noticed we are looking for someone to help us here at MarkAllenOnline. It is a fun job but there are a lot of little things that need to get done for any business to operate. Unfortunately my blog is fun but not high on the priority list of things to do. This is a job and there is a reason why it is called that way. In any case earlier this month I got back from my Wichita Kansas tri camp little tired from my long round trip drive. Total round trip 1300 miles. Kimberly one of my campers in Boulder earlier in the year asked me if I would come to Wichita if she could put together the camp. I said sure why not. As a triathlete I really like traveling to races anywhere. Our country has many wonderful places to visit and if you come with an open mind you find out how people live in many places. When I was racing quite a bit I took a trip to a small race in Nebraska and I spend a weekend of racing and visited the local stock car race. That was a lot of fun and people were super. Wichita was no different but Wichita is not a small town, it has all the amenities you can think of, malls, restaurants etc. Oh yes there are plenty of Starbuck stores. It reminded me of the days when I lived in Houston Texas. Wichita has the old part of town (East) with the older large homes and big trees and the newer part of town with planned developments, cul-de-sacs and smaller trees. Just like any other growing city. Apparently the city has a lot of industry and many large companies have offices here and pay great salaries. Combine that with affordable real state and you have people with a lot of disposable income. Maybe they can use some of those funds to build some hills for my athletes to do hill intervals.
The camp was hosted by the west side YMCA. I should call this place the theme park YMCA. I like Boulder but there is nothing like this in a 30 mile radius. I guess the land would be too expensive and never mind all the other stuff.
I gave a free talk to anyone that wanted to listen about triathlon training and heart rate on the first night. I think it went well. I prepared some slides which I handed out and went at it. I never really plan what I am going to say. I like it that way. I think I used to plan my talks a little more but they never went as planned so I gave up on that.
The campers had a wide range of abilities. There were some podium type athletes and some beginners. But I think all got tons of information to take home with them and consider with their training. As I mentioned is a previous post many people can improve quite a bit with a few changes in their training and lifestyle. I hope some of them sign up for our online training. I am sure that can do great in the sport with some good guidance and the crash course I gave them.
My most memorable thing was the heat by far. I am not used to riding in near 100 degrees and humidity. It was like Kona training. I had to really watch my hydration all weekend.
Overall I had a very nice time. I just have to rethink the driving. I wanted to be at my son’s soccer practice Monday at 11:00 AM given that I am the coach. That meant I had to leave after the last day camp dinner and drive 4 to 5 hours, find a hotel, get up early and drive the last 4 hours. It worked out fine but I was dead beat.