Last weekend I met 5 MarkAllenOnline athletes that traveled to Boulder for my April Long Distance Camp. The weather in Boulder cooperated and we had a couple of great days to train. On Saturday morning I ran a swim session with some drills and finished up with a longer set. I tried to take it easy on this sessions as I know that swimming is the one sport were altitude seems to affect athletes the most. Shortly after the ride we went for a long bike ride. The ride split a bit to accommodate those going real long and those going a bit short and perhaps doing a brick. I got to ride 92 miles with some of the campers so that was good. It was my longest ride this year. Having people to do it with certainly makes it go much faster. The day finished with dinner at a nice local restaurant were I also had a short talk on Ironman training.
Sunday was our long run day. I did not want the campers to run on an empty stomach so we all went to breakfast followed by a nutrition talk at nearby Boulder creek. We started our long run around 11 AM on the hottest day in Boulder this year. The temperature at 8:00 AM is about 30 degrees colder than at 11:00 AM so the wait paid off. I always think that as triathletes we need to train when is hot particularly for the run. The day ended with some swim stroke analysis. I have an underwater camera so I filmed every one of the campers. This allowed me to check their stroke under and over the water. I was hoping they will swim a bit to relax the muscles but most were tired and just got in and out. Is that a sign of a good camp?
I think most of the campers enjoyed themselves. If you are a triathlete and you come to Boulder you will want to move here. It is a great place to train. I did get some good suggestions to implement for my June camp. I did notice a bit of stress from those who came out to Boulder with family or friends. Although I do have a schedule on the camp web site I did not follow it very tight. I expected campers to dedicate all day to the camp so if something ran too long or if I wanted to do something different it would not be an issue. But apparently the family and friends of those in the camp were expecting the campers to be available as the schedule indicated. This was an interesting dynamic. I have to keep that in mind.
The weather since the camp in Boulder has been excellent. My training has been going fairly well and I have not missed much. I did a 2 hour run a couple of week ago. Again that was my longest run in 10 years. It went well but I strained something in my groin. It does not stop me from training but I can still feel it very slightly. I ran 1:30 today and felt it a bit. I have also gone on a couple of short bike mountain climbs and they felt good. I was not flying but I was never tired. My training heart rate is very low lately so I think it is time to do some short races. There is a duathlon coming up in a few weeks and I think I will sign up. Without a swim I will be a fish out of water but that is fine. It will be good to do a hard effort.
On another front I have been very busy with emails, taxes and my move. Mark is gone for a week so I have to answer all the emails. Then with tax week here, it is crazy. Right now I owe 1500 but I think I can open a medical savings account Monday and deduct some of those expenses for 2005. With the birth of Sofia and all of the expenses when she had the ROTA virus there is quite a bit there. Are there any accountants out there that can shed light on this one? Finally, next weekend we are packing and we are out of here. (sad face) We are moving to Winter Park Colorado. I could not find shorts to go run earlier today. My wife had packed all that already. Oops!