A Campers Recount-by Jay Johnson
My wife Lana and I have our Tivo set up to grab anything with the word triathlon in it. One night, Tivo blessed me with a show on the Fine Living Network called "Fantasy Camps" and it was about triathlons. The camp they highlighted was a camp in Las Vegas that gathered some of the world's best athletes and coaches to give regular people the insight into the world of elite training - and give them the take home product that will enable them to… (a) improve their skills, (b) understand scheduling and (c) increase their overall understanding of the sport. Oh, and did I mention it is held at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas which are some very nice digs.
It all started innocently enough on Christmas morning. I opened one package that had a set of papers in it. The papers included the dialogue between Lana and Wes Hobson of Wes Hobson Performance. Normally, I'd be a bit upset if she was having extended email conversations with another man, but we'll let it go this time. Background…Wes is an icon in the world of triathlon and knows more about training for and winning triathlons than most cities combined. When you're ranked in the top ten in the world for a decade, you get that kind of knowledge through blood sweat and tears, and Wes uses that knowledge to help the rest of us. Back to Christmas, I read through the emails that Lana had printed out and the last one says "Lana, We have Jay's spot booked. -Wes" Holy frijole, I'm going to camp!
Day One:
The first day includes an afternoon professional bike fitting by Rob Kaplan, who has immense patience and can take my insightful comments like "That doesn't feel right" and make the appropriate adjustments so that it does feel right. He can make your bike fit depending on what you want to do. You want a more aggressive aero style? No problem, Rob will set you up so that you can get more aero with less paino. After the bike fits, we got together for a light dinner and to meet the other campers and staff members. The campers are all awesome, and these are no ordinary camp counselors unless you live in a triathlon group home for the elite of the elite. These counselors include none other than Wes Hobson (as mentioned above), five-time world champion Simon Lessing and Olympian and Ironman Lake Placid winner Ryan Bolton, Beyond the athletes, there is a whole compliment of resources like Bruce Gottlieb a psychotherapist who works with professional athletes from all endeavors, and Joe Friel, the father of triathlon training as we know it. No one knows more about training athletes than Joe Friel, period. We finished off the evening with a great mental prep discussion by Bruce. His mantra is "Be Positive." Sounds easy, but it's hard when you're suffering on a stretch of mountain climbing and your cycling computer reads 8 mph…and dropping. He gave some great magic beans (ok, they were ideas, but I like the magic bean theory) to keep in our pockets to take out when needed. I'm not going to share them because they are now my leg up on the competition (think about that the next time you see me disappear off the front). After that it was an early night so that we could rest for big Day Two.
Okay, Day Two:
8:00AM and we're off to the pool at a big swim facility in town. We split into groups and start doing drills and getting our lactate threshold tested. The whole pool workout was a great swim experience. It about killed me because we swam over 3,000 meters and my usual workout is about half that - but we did it over two hours, so it spread the pain out enough. However, I got some great drill insight from Ryan, and some very good tips from Simon. Everyone there saw how poorly I swim, but it is not intimidating, they are there to help, and that is what they do. They treat everyone the same and understand that we all can improve, some just have more room for improvement than others. It really is a great learning environment. They answer all of our questions no matter how inane.
After the swim, we headed for the hills. Las Vegas is bordered on the West side by the Red Rock Canyon, and it is amazingly beautiful. We did a 16-mile loop that rose for the first 5 miles a total of 2,500 vertical feet. Crazy-type hill climbing for us flat-landers. The only saving grace was that the view was magnificent, and I was riding with Wes Hobson (don't get to do that everyday - or ever!). Once we completed that, it was off on a run. We ran back into the canyon a bit and did some creek crossings and some adventure style running, but again, the view and the nice running surface made for a great time. That and getting tips from Wes made the run very fun and educational.
After that, I was cooked. I hadn't done all three sports in one day since a triathlon in November of last year. We came back to the hotel, got cleaned up and headed for the round-up area where food and presentations took place. Bruce had the floor and walked us through mental preparedness and over-coming hurdles that you either put there yourself, someone else did, or they just happened. I have to admit, Bruce was the only camp counselor that I did not know by name when we arrived, but I definitely do now. I really enjoyed his ability to cross-over between the kum-bi-ya "Boulder mentality" and real-world situations that we all deal with in the sport of triathlon (and outside of it). And Hey, it works!
After dinner, Joe Friel took the floor to discuss the guiding principles of his coaching which is periodization. As he said, it is a simple concept, but has so many facets, you can never really get to a final conclusion. It keeps evolving as more and more is understood about the body's response to training. As I said earlier, Joe knows training. He can cite references and studies on both sides of any discussion regarding training - and he does it without prejudice, retaining the right to change his mind as new evidence rolls in. There is one response that he never waivers on though, and that is his response to almost any question from an athlete. The response will start with "It depends…" Joe is keenly aware that we are all looking for the one-stop-shop answer that will always work for us in training and he has been at this long enough to know that no two athletes are alike - heck most of the time one athlete is not the same as he/she was previously. After Joe's discussion it was time to hit the tables, have a few adult beverages, donate to the local economy and then wind up getting to bed by 10PM (on a Friday in Las Vegas…is that sad?).
Feelin' Good and it's Day Three
8:00AM in the pool at the Venetian. Simon gave us some excellent tips on open water swimming, protecting ourselves, drafting off of peoples' feet, the popular Roll-Over Your Neighbor Move (don't try that at home kids), and insight on how some of his successes (and failures) can make a difference in our races. We also got to see our pool videos individually and have them critiqued so that we now know what to work on (the list is long, but manageable for yours truly). Oh yeah, I almost forgot, Ryan "More Drills" Bolton decided that we didn't do nearly enough on day two, so we were at the drills again. After the pool, we got to change in the comfort of our own rooms and then grab our riding and running gear. We scampered over to the UNLV track for some running drills. Since the campus is close to the strip, we ran there. So anyway, Ryan and I are running to the track and I ask him "Are you going to do another marathon outside of the Ironman races?" And he says "No, I've done only one, and that was just to get the feel for a full marathon before I started Iron distance racing." Uh huh…now what I knew and he wasn't going to tell me is that he won the Valley of the Sun Marathon in Arizona a few years ago (2000?) - so of course I say "Wait, you've only raced one marathon, and you won it?" And Ryan says "Yes." Matter-of-factly, like "Hasn't everyone?" End of story…Some people run their whole lives to win a race (let alone a marathon) and he does it on his first try - that is the caliber of people at Fantasy Camp.
Down at the track, Joe Friel shows us how to run. It's easy, but I still did it wrong according to the tape. We got filmed and critiqued on this as well, and it is amazing how many little (and big) things you can see about yourself that you can't feel. I thought I was running pretty close to the form I needed, errrrrrr…..wrong. The good news again, is that I've got some things to work on, and some speed to gain.
After the track it's lunch time, Wes' discussion on prepping for a race and then off to ride again. This time it was an out and back ride where we go as far as we can for about 50-60 minutes and then come back downhill in about half that time. This again was a good hill workout, and I got to learn the three strikes rule from Bruce too. I'll be keeping that to myself too, neener neener.
After the ride we made it back to the hotel just in time for a seminar on nutrition by Ryan. Considering he has about 2% body fat, he must be doing something right, so hopefully I picked some of that up. I really hope that whatever he has is contagious and I can start buying size 28 pants again. We had some downtime to get all gussied up and then we went to Aquanox restaurant for dinner. Very nice and very good food. Simon gave us an overview of how he got where he is. He has been to some really neat and exotic places, and had to run his arse off to make a go of it. Simon has the outlook of a winner. When he is looking around you can tell he is taking inventory of who is around and he knows who he can beat and who he'll have to work on to beat. He has the aura of someone who just shows up and you can hear the air going out of others sails and right into his powerhouse.
Vegas Baby, Vegas: Day Four - 7:45AM Sunday
This is the only morning of the week you can ride down the strip with a lowered level of fear because most people in Vegas are passed out. We rode up and down the strip and took in the sights, took our big group photo at the Welcome to Las Vegas sign and then back to the hotel. Simon showed us the nuances of transitions that can get us in and out of transition faster. Again, I'll go ahead and keep these little tidbits for my own use thank you.
When we gathered back up we had brunch and Joe showed us the process of scheduling our training. This, along with the new version of The Triathlete's Training Bible that we all received, was an awesome transfer of knowledge. Joe breaks down some pretty high level thinking so that mere mortals like me can understand it. He went through the big-picture of planning a year down to determining which workout to do in a specific week. Incredible information. After Joe came Ryan with a discussion on stretching. Stretching is not something I do, so it was enlightening for me. Not so much in which stretches to do, rather when and how much to do. After his presentation, I'm definitely getting back into yoga.
When they had filled our heads with information, our stomachs with good food, and our muscles with lactic acid, we had one final session of Q & A and called it a camp. The people who work behind the scenes like Eric Feller (co-director of the camp), Clayton (on-the-spot medical man) and Bryan are the ones who make sure that all of the magic happens and they did an awesome job. It is amazing to me that even during the off-times when we were in the vans going to the next venue, I would get a ton of information from listening to questions from other campers and asking them myself.
I wanted to write down what I remember most about the camp, but as you can see by the length of this little note, it was everything. This camp is for everyone - even people who haven't done a first triathlon. There are enough staff members that they can have one group fly off the front with Simon, and one group towards the back working on skills and the rest of us in the middle. There were two people who had been to all three years of the camp, and of course the couple who we saw on TV were back. The camp is set in a perfect time of year to jump start a season, and take a baseline of where you are physically.
We all left camp a bit tired, full of knowledge and with all kinds of cool DVDs from Endurance Films. I would highly recommend this camp and any other put on by these gentlemen - go to www.weshobsonperformance.com. I will be back next year because I will be better and it will be Ironman year for me.
