Tucson, AZ
January 22-29, 2011
This wasn’t a race, but it involved so much training that I figured I’d post about it anyway (plus, classes haven’t started yet, so I have no psets I should be doing). I haven’t written anything for quite a while, so first I’ll briefly outline the last few months, then go into more detail on our awesome training camp in Tucson.
October-November: First, I “Recovered” from triathlon season, then got bored so started training for a half-marathon in November. I took a week off from running, then started running a lot. It was fun, even the ridiculously long and unnecessary runs (i.e. 16 milers), but when I added in threshhold and hill workouts my legs started protesting. I almost got a stress fracture in my shin, or something of the sort, so decided to scratch the half-marathon and go back to swimming and cycling instead.
November-December: Just before Thanksgiving, I fell getting on to my commuter bike (it got caught in the bike rack somehow) and slammed into the brick ground. My first non-overuse injury ever, I either badly bruised or cracked a rib, which made me avoid sleeping on one side or sneezing for several months. Incidentally, it is difficult to swim with a cracked rib, because the side-to-side movement is rather agonizing, so I stopped swimming altogether until mid-January.
Break/IAP: I went back home to Jackson, WY for a month! There, I set up my mom’s road bike on my trainer, downloaded lots of movies, and did a decent bit of training indoors; my tolerance for trainer-riding has improved greatly since last year, but I still can’t possibly force myself into more than 10-ish hours per week on it. The rest of my training hours were gotten through skate-skiing, with some running thrown in (and a handful of swims, plus lots of downhill skiing but I don’t think that really counts). Also, one week we visited Palm Desert, California, where I rented a road bike for 4 days and got some real riding in
All in all, a very relaxing and athletic break, though none of the local races that I wanted to do were scheduled during that time.
Now that I’ve recapped all of that, on to training camp!
I flew back to Boston for a few days, and picked up my bike from Landry’s, where it had undergone several hundred dollars worth of fixes – new rear derailleur, derailleur-hanger, chain, and tire. Then, 13 of us flew to Tucson.
We stayed in 6 different host houses, with various cyclists somehow affiliated to the university. Juls and I lived with Chloe and TJ, two awesome mountain bikers who also are wickedly fast on the road.
Every day, our schedule went something like this: Wake up ~7:30am (it was light out, so I woke up earlier than strictly necessary), eat a big bowl of oatmeal, ride over to a nearby host house, then leave with the whole group at “10” (never really managed to leave on time, though). We would ride for most of the day, occasionally stopping for lunch but sometimes just for a power bar, come home, shower, eat “lunch”, eat dinner, chat a bit or watch a movie, then sleep. Repeat.
It was reminiscent of my high school nordic training camps, albeit with much more pleasant weather. Actually, the weather was absolutely perfect, every single day. 68 degrees, usually, which, if you know me well, you know is my favorite temperature. I got some pretty wicked tan lines, especially from my bike gloves:
The rides:
Mt Lemmon: On day 1 (Sunday) and again on Friday, we tackled Mt. Lemmon. This ride involved 16 miles each way to the base, then 25 miles of climbing with 7000ft of elevation gain, then a fast descent. The first time, I climbed with Christina the whole time, and we thought we were going pretty steady but with scarily high heart rates (think: 2.5 hours around threshhold/170s…) We turned back at Palisade visitor center, 20 miles up, with the thought that we could have made it the rest of the way but then we would be too tired for the next day’s long ride. By the second time we did Lemmon, I was apparently in so much better shape or so much more used to riding that I made it all the way at both a faster pace and with a much lower heart rate (164 avg for the climb). Yay, improvement! And, there were giant cookies at the top in Summerhaven:
Tour de Tucson: The second day of the trip, we did part of the “Tour de Tucson”. This is normally a 109 mile ride, but would have been more like 130 for us since we had to get to and from the start from our houses. We rode up north towards Oro Valley, then west, then south, making a counter-clockwise loop that clocked in around 90 miles. A solid day, with a solid pace, especially after the previous day’s climb. Last summer, I did a century ride and an 80-mile ride, but other than that I never had ridden more than 65 miles at a time, so this was a lot of riding for me.
Gates Pass: On day 3, we rode Gates Pass. This was deceptive, because I felt tired and started pacing myself, prepared for a Mt. Lemmon-esque climb, but it was less than 2 miles to the top. (whew, what a relief) It had a fun descent, and then I struck out on my own to north to do a loop called “The Big Square”. I passed through Saguaro National Park, then rode a very desert-like, rather large square, then finally arrived back home in time for a group stretch. Total 64 miles.
Rest Day! After 3 heavy days of riding, we took a “rest day”. In the morning, we went to a quiet neighborhood and did some cornering practice, then in the afternoon several of us went hiking in Catalina State Park. I chose a route to the Romero Pools, 6 miles roundtrip, which led us through desert and mountains to end up at a beautiful spot with pools of water. In the summertime, there are waterfalls, and lots of people swim in the pools. In mid-January, only stupid people swim in them because it is glacial melt, but Juls and I did it anyway because we are so cool:
Gates Pass 2: The following day, I awoke to a cough and lungs that hurt to breathe deeply, so I decided to take it “easy” and only rode 50 miles. We went through Gates Pass again, then instead of doing the Big Square cut back east earlier. It was quite pretty, and we got some good TTT practice in.
Mt Lemmon (explained above). Still had the cough, but all the tea and vitamin C must have made me feel much better. Or maybe the huge Mexican dinner from the night before…
The Shootout: For the final day, we rode a common route called “The Shootout”. Every Saturday morning, a big group of super fast cat 1-2s and pros meets up and rides this loop really fast. Most of us didn’t join them, instead waiting until later in the morning to ride, but we did go quite fast anyway. My legs and butt were starting to get pretty tired from all this riding and pulling, so this was a tough one for me, especially since some of the boys added in group sprints. I was glad that most of the uphill was in the first half, and very glad to make it back home and make myself a protein shake.
That was training camp, minus all the fun people and exciting things we did besides ride! (e.g. eat, watch the ‘Worst Road Crashes’ video, and massage our legs with ‘The Stick’). It was an awesome experience, and I hope we do it again somewhere like this next year! Ready for road season…
Total: 440 miles, 29 hours of riding, 1 week
