Trimarni All-Levels Camp - Day 1 recap

It's been a camp tradition for us to make sure that our campers feel slightly exhausted and accomplished on day one of camp. Typically this means packing the day with swim, bike, run workouts from morning until late afternoon. This year at camp was no exception. Our campers started the day at 8:15am and finished just after 5:30pm with only a 90-minute break from 12:30-2pm.

For this camp, the theme of our camp is "Do things well". We are constantly addressing issues with form, skills, terrain management and execution to ensure that our campers/athletes can execute well on race day. While fitness is important, far too many athletes get overly obsessed with becoming fit through training but lack the ability to apply that fitness to race day conditions/courses. At Trimarni, we teach our athletes how to race well with their current level of fitness.

At camp, we are constantly reminding our campers/athletes that endurance triathlon racing is done on a tired body. As the race continued, mechanical/muscle, cardio, brain and body fatigue progress. Thus, we must learn to do things well in a fatigued and tired state. This means making good terrain, skills, nutrition, mental and pacing decisions when not feeling relatively fresh. 

There's always a strong emphasis of education at our camps, with constant individual skill/form feedback, but coaching only works if athletes can take "coaching" information and apply to race day. We strive to make sure that our campers/athletes can apply training to outdoor/real world settings on race day, in an unfamiliar and perhaps challenging and stressful environments.

Here's a recap of day 1 of camp:

8:15am-9am

• Athlete introduction
• Coaches discussion on camp focus
• Swimming/open water discussion

9am-10:30am

• Swim workout at Furman University (entire pool reserved for campers)
• Speed-focused and race day simulation with sighting and deck-ups

11-12:15am

• Track workout at Furman University
• Form and effort focus, with emphasis on half Ironman distance racing

2-2:30pm

• Cycling discussion by Karel
• Focus on climbing, descending, how to properly get out of the saddle to climb, u-turns, changing gears

3-5:30pm

• Skill application - practicing climbing out of the saddle, u-turns, stopping on demand
• Bike workout - ~30 min smooth ride out to the "course"
• Main set (3-4 times) on a flat + steady/steep climb 
• Smooth ride back to the camp house

7:30-8pm

• Coach discussion/reflect on day 1 of camp
• Athlete/Coach Q&A

Swim workout

Campers getting ready for the pre-set 

Track workout (immediately after the swim)

Campers warming up on the track while listening to coach Karel discuss proper running form for triathletes. 

Karel demonstrating the proper way to get out of the saddle when climbing. 

Smiling faces before workout #3

A perfect spring day in the mountains for a ride. 

Before the start of the main set

Never a shortage of farm animals where we ride. 

Riding back to the lodge