Tucson Training Camp

Just got back from a 5-day training camp out in Tucson with some racing buddies. Weather was fantastic--sunny, mid-80s every day, dry--and we all got in some solid training. The goal of the camp was to focus on cycling volume and to train like pros (i.e. lots of rest, lots of food, low stress).

We stayed in a beautiful house to the west of downtown Tucson, tucked away in the mountains that had a number of bedrooms, a really awesome kitchen and an outdoor pool and grilling area. Worked out perfectly because we had tonnes of room to spread out, cook, relax and tinker with our bikes.

Pool at nighttime

House from the outside

Tour of kitchen and living area

When we weren't training, we spent most of our time lying around doing very. Oh, and eating. A lot. I figured that we'd have a lot more free time since we didn't have to go to work or keep up with the day-to-day of living in New York, but between training, prepping for workouts and cooking/eating all of the necessary food, the days went by pretty fast.

One of the interesting adaptations that I had to make was to increase my food intake dramatically. Normally, I go a little calorie-deficient on weekends in the spring and this helps me get down to race weight. But with five really tough days of training back-to-back, we all had to spend most of our free time putting food and fluids down the hatch. A typical day included:
6am: Wake-up, eat a giant bowl of cereal and fruit (~500 Cal). Drink 3 bottles of water to get back all of the fluids lost while sleeping (since we're in the dessert). Coffee!
7:30am: Get to the pool and put down 1.5hr swimming (burn about ~800 Cal). Drink 1 bottle of Gatorade Endurance sport drink (~100 Cal) while swimming.
9:00am: Finish up swimming and drink another bottle of water on the drive home and eat a banana (~100 Cal).
10:00am: Breakfast time. Granola, fruit, yogurt (~400 Cal). Large plate of chicken and rice with a high dose of salt to carry us through the day (~800 Cal). Drink 3 more bottles of water.
11:00am: Nap / watch TV. Nurse a bottle of water.
1:00pm: Head out for 3.5hr bike ride (~2400 Cal). Go through 4 bottles of sport drink and CarboPro (~800 Cal).
5:00pm: Quick 30min transition run (~500 Cal).
5:30pm: Drink UltraGen recovery drink (~300 Cal) on the drive home.
6:00pm: Back at the house, drink 4 bottles of water. Eat lots of dried fruit and nuts (~300 Cal).
6:30pm: Cook some dinner.
7:30pm: Eat dinner, e.g. pesto whole chicken grilled on BBQ, mushrooms sauteed with bacon, asparagus, rice. Eat two more servings. (~1500Cal + ~250Cal in beer)
8:30pm: Sit around and pass out in food coma.



So at this point, I've eaten 3600 Cal, drunk 1400 Cal and used 3700 Cal on top of the 1900 Cal from my base metabolic rate. I'm exhausted from all of the food I have to eat and I'm still short about 600 Cal. Anyway, 5 days later of running between -600 Cal and -1000 Cal and you start to run low on energy. I left for Arizona around 174 (read: winter fat-ass) and returned home at 170 (read: well on my way to race weight). If I could do it all over again, I'd try to eat even more so that I didn't dog it so much on my last few long workouts. In any case, I now have a whole new respect for the caloric demands of being a pro cyclist or pro swimmer.

All in all, the trip ended up being fantastic and although there was a significant build-up of fatigue as the week progressed, I definitely came back to New York feeling a lot stronger. Highlights included riding Gates Pass, Mount Lemmon and Madera Canyon; lots of outdoor swimming; and running the Sabino Canyon. As I have more time, I'll probably put up a few posts on specific rides and runs that were really awesome and include a few pictures.

Totals for the week:
22.5hrs
~15,000 yd swimming
~230 mi cycling
~30 mi running