Training Tip Tuesday #10- Camp Cobb

The weekend following thanksgiving I organized a small training camp in Tyler, Tx for a small group of pro triathletes. John Cobb and Jeremy Brown at Cobb Cycling were kind enough to help facilitate some of the camp activities and provide us with some meals and a location to base our rides from. It was a low key way for many of us to start easing back into training. We weren't too worried about intervals or splits, just getting some miles in and enjoying spending time with friends. Training camps are a great opportunity to get a focused block of training in without the distractions of work and life. More than just added training, I think one of the biggest benefits of doing a camp is being able to focus more on recovery. We didn't start our activities until 8am most days and the only thing we did between workouts was eat and watch football. As busy triathletes, our days are normally jam packed from dawn to dusk and I always find it refreshing to be able to relax between training sessions without scurrying around.

We had 10 athletes attend the camp. Jeremy Brown, Seth Cooke and Clay Emge our local, Tyler residents. Natalie Bach drove in from Longview for the weekend. The out of towers included Robbie Wade, my wife Jessica and I from San Antonio, Lauren Lewis and Scott Wilkinson from College Station and Ben Hall from the countr- errrr... state, of Louisiana.

We kicked things off on Saturday morning with an easy 3 mile jog and a 1 mile prediction run at the track. The way the prediction run works is everyone tries to guess what time they will run for a mile and no one gets to wear a watch. What makes it even more difficult is the fact that we all started together and no one knew what the scrawny guy in compression socks next to him had put down for a time. As you can see from the picture below, Robbie is basically a human garmin. Maybe he could get a job testing their watches for them. Scott won the award for most horrible pacing abilities.

Next we headed over to Cobb Cycling to change and head out for a bike ride. Clay was kind enough to  tell me the original route I had planned was complete trash and led us on some of the most pleasant, smoothest roads in all of Tyler. We also managed to find a hill or two. Namely the beast-

This sign wasn't there for us but we still received a warm welcome 

You can get a taste of the beast yourself if you care to give "Texas' Hardest Half" a good old-fashioned tri. Steve Farris does an excellent job putting the race on and it is indeed quite challenging. You'll get to see the beauty of East Texas in full force though and there is also a sprint and olympic for the faint of heart and weak of quadricep. www.tritylerhalf.com

We were all pretty horribly out of shape so the originally planned 80 miles quickly turned into 67 and everyone was perfectly ok with that. We adjourned for the afternoon before meeting up for a pizza dinner and watching one of the craziest plays in college football.

Sunday morning kicked off with a 10 mile trail run that quickly turned from easy to steady to hard to balls-to-the-wall-flying-over-rocks-and-roots. I swear I was close to pr'ing my 5k those last 3.1 miles. Fortunately I only rolled my ankle twice and was quickly on my feet before the pack could run me over and disappear into the brush.

Some breakfast and the compulsory chocolate milk had us refueled and ready to hit the pool. Most of us knocked out a good set of-

While Robbie and Seth kept the hot tub bubbling for us.

Finally it was off to Cobb Cycling again for an easy spin. John was kind enough to tell some of us all the things we were doing horribly wrong on our bikes,

and Ben provided the scenery...

Glutes and calves like this are what 2:10 70.3 bike splits are made of

We wrapped up at Jason's deli where John entertained us with some stories from his early days and gave some excellent advice to all the young pro's on how to conduct ourselves as true professionals.

Most of the crew had to head out after that because of school, work or… actually school and work were the only reasons. Ben Hall stuck around with me for a couple more days so we could practice taking our shirts off and eating large amounts of ice cream.

Monday morning we slept in, lazed around Cobb Cycling and bribed them with starbucks coffee for use of their internet. We hit up a noon swim at UT Tyler with the illustrious Bob Hepler of UT Tyler. Bob was my cross country coach in college and has been my mentor and role model for many years.

After our swim we kitted up and jumped on the bikes for a cruisy 3 hour ride around Tyler. I got to examine Ben's glutes for much of this ride and am still very impressed by their strength.

Another plus from this ride was I found out how inept I am at operating a GoPro. We staged many dramatic attacking and pacelining scenes that were apparently never captured and will be forever buried in the annals of history.

We finished things off on Tuesday morning with an easy 8 mile run with Bob. Well, it was easy for us at least...

Now you know why the UT Tyler XC team is so successful.
They have this angry mammal chasing them in every workout.

An easy 2k swim and we were done! Coming out of a camp is always a bit depressing as you have to return to the reality of normal life but I always find myself much more motivated to stay consistent with my training. Getting to spend time with friends and seeing how hard they work every day motivates me to keep working hard so I can wipe the pavement with their faces on race day.

A huge thanks to John and Jeremy at Cobb Cycling for making this weekend possible and for capturing all the media footage. A big thanks is also owed to our home stays, Summer Brenneman and Karen Brown for letting a bunch of smelly triathletes crash their house for the weekend. And finally thanks to UT Tyler for letting us use their pool.

Word on the street is that more camps are in the works and will be offered to the general public in 2014 so stay tuned for more details!!