Training camp – UK DIY style

Swanage, 8:00pm Friday, April 5th

Of the twenty three of us on the club training camp, nine of us were roaming the town looking for a cheap and cheerful dinner. We’d merrily sauntered into several pubs and restaurants and received pitying looks when we asked the waiting staff for a table for seven that we hadn’t booked (for some reason we thought fibbing about the actual number would get us in the door and then we could get creative with seating).

Eventually we found a pub that did have a couple of tables we could drag together – we weren’t 100% certain but there was some consensus that it was the only pub in Swanage that the hostel receptionist had warned us away from. We weren’t too worried; everyone was in a great mood and the jokes and tall tales were flowing, highlights included the young lady who’d organised a lift with a completely different person to the one she thought she was talking to causing some confusion on both sides when she was picked up.

We quickly got a round in and chose the least offensive looking food off the laminated menus (which at least was classy enough to not include photos of the dishes). The rest of the club trickled in to Swanage over the next couple of hours, and, conscious of what looked like some brutal terrain, everyone was tucked up in bed before too long.

It probably would have been even earlier but one of the group seemed to have been given a crab linguini for six people by mistake, and like the champion that she is set the first benchmark for the weekend refusing to be beaten by the massive mountain of pasta in front of her.

I’ve done a couple of training camps now, and while the Mediterranean is amazing and finding proper mountains can be fantastic, there’s no doubt that it can be enormously expensive once you’ve added in the flights, accommodation, food, transfers and bike hire (or possibly even worse, the hassle involved with finding a bike box, dismantling your bike, stressing about luggage handlers further dismantling the bike, reassembling at the other end and knowing the whole process has to be reversed at the end of the week), and just the sheer amount of time it can take to plan, book and travel to your selected sun drenched destination.

This time, my small and incredibly friendly tri club had decided to run their first training camp, but keep it simple and local. Organised by Jane and Richard, two of the committee, they’d checked out Swanage on a recce weekend and spotted the youth hostel had just had a multi million pound revamp. A bed in a shared room for the two nights came in around £70; a £10 per person food kitty covered breakfast and lunch and the majority quickly paired up sharing lifts down, making this a relatively inexpensive weekend away. A lot of us were able to break away from work an hour or so early which meant we could miss the worst of the traffic and arrive in time to unpack before dinner. The rooms were amazing – nothing extravagant, but modern, immaculately clean, secured by multiple cardkey operated doors and full of little touches like USB charging sockets even for those in a top bunk. The hostel also had a secure bike store – out of sight and out of mind is always a weight off my mind and I was glad to get bikes off the car and away.

Swanage, 9:00 am Saturday April 6th

There had been some groaning about the seven o’clock breakfast, but that meant massive quantities of everything from bacon and egg sandwiches through porridge and granola had had a chance to settle a little before the three groups set off at 8:30 on either a 40m short or 50m medium ride. There were a couple of new members with us, but I’d been impressed by how everyone had made them welcome the night before and that morning, and for their part, they’d all slotted in seamlessly.

I took far too long to work out that the group I was with was fast and my natural desire to sit at the back and try to keep an eye on everyone was slowing the group up as I dragged my heavy carcass up the surprisingly large hills we were coming across. Because of that I was currently hoping the rest of the crew didn’t think I was just being an arse as I hammered past people down through the bends around beautiful Corfe castle to give myself a bit of a buffer before the next inevitable rise swung into view. Fortunately I no longer stop like I’ve been shot as soon as the road twists upwards, but with over 400m of climbing in the first twenty km, everyone was soon feeling the climbs in their legs; the pace was set perfectly with just enough spare lung capacity to chat as we rode… providing it was on one of the flat bits. Who needs Sa Calobra or Mount Teide?

The scenery around the Jurassic coast is amazing although we were often too focused on grovelling up a 15% incline or concentrating furiously as we dropped down the other side; I had one interesting moment when I came round a corner a bit quicker than I should have and nearly hit a tractor as a result of actually hitting some unidentified brown stuff on the road (I’m pretty sure I know what it was and nearly added some of my own as the back of the bike made a spirited attempt to overtake the front), but the group were riding well – sometimes riding in a tight train, sometimes spread out, but whenever a turn was made, the leaders stopped to make sure the rest of the group spotted the turn and we were all grouped back together.

Jane and Richard had sent a packing list to everyone. We all had water, food and spares in the event of mechanicals, and although a number of problems popped up we were able to address them all on the road. Richard, who was recovering from injury as well as being half of the organisational team had volunteered as ‘Sweeper’ using his car as a broom wagon – the small laminated rectangles he handed to everyone with mobile numbers, as well as landline and
addresses for the hostel was genius.

Swanage, 12:00 pm Saturday April 6th

The four fastest cyclists had missed a turn, and gone straight up a 20% hill. It was huge – you could see the treeline going up at least a kilometre. As we looked at each other standing at the start of the climb someone eventually voiced the thing we were all thinking.

‘Who’s going to ride up after them and tell them they’ve gone wrong?’

The silence was profound and prolonged as we all squinted suspiciously from face to face like gunslingers in a Mexican standoff.

We’d eventually all made it back to the hostel and after a brick run of varying distances (mine was very short, but I don’t think anyone was especially going for it) furiously bolted sandwiches, pork pies and crisps while rehydrating, hoping the old maxim ‘You can’t outrun a poor diet’ was technically incorrect. We had ninety minutes before technique training and interval running. It seemed like loads of time, but as we all caught up with the highs and lows of the ride while washing up, the minutes flew by and soon we were heading out again.

Swanage, 3:30 pm Saturday April 6th

The club’s run coaches had found a 300m long horseshoe shaped crescent around a gigantic old peoples home. Curtains had been twitching furiously as twenty odd finely tuned athletes practiced their lunges, high and low skipping and fast feet up and down the (usually) quiet residential street. The pensioner with the cane who edged past us as we did grapevines en masse wasn’t even trying to hide his sniggering.

But the frivolity was over – paired up we were taking turns to sprint around the crescent before tagging our recovering partner. Worried we were about to see lunchtime flapjacks again, and even more worried we’d gone off too fast, I think everyone collectively was delighted with how quick and sustained we were able to dispatch the interval blocks. Every single person I ran past on every single interval was shouting encouragement at me – it made it impossible to not do my very best.

Hard work dealt with, we continued to provide locals with entertainment as we sprawled all over the road to properly stretch before heading back for a quick shower and then out for dinner.

The organisers had been more efficient than the rest of us and had secured a private room in a much nicer pub this time round. Somehow, however, it still appeared we’d fibbed about numbers and had to get creative with the seating. Across the whole weekend, we showed again and again that planning for the tiniest of things is incredibly difficult and providing your group is relaxed and ready to roll up sleeves and muck in when needed you don’t really need to have every last detail locked down.

The best thing about the training camp was that we all share at least three interests and all genuinely like each other – the conversation flowed freely and switched from subject to subject as different club members dropped in and out of the bits they found interesting. I’d been blown away that day by some of the newer members storming up hills they’d been worried about, by some of the older members of the team holding their own with the GBR athletes (roughly a third of this particular group) they were riding, then running with (and completely destroying me at both), by the amazing athlete who managed to make a mountain bike with knobbly tires no handicap at all and the sheer guts and determination shown by the one faller on the ride who (despite falling with spectacular flair) got back up and powered through every part of the remaining weekend.

Every single person on the trip was relaxing over their meal and a drink and sharing stories about recent events, worries about some of those upcoming, and filling in information about their lives and families outside of the club. There was a lot of learning and laughing going on all around, fitting in perfectly with everything else that weekend.

Swanage, 10:30 am Sunday April 7th

With a slightly later start under our belts we’d all headed out for a ‘run’ up the Jurassic Coastal Path. The scenery was spectacular and so was the underfoot terrain – nursing a slightly angry ankle anyway I’d quickly decided a brisk walk with bits of jogging on the flatter parts of the route was less likely to maim me, and I’d found a like minded soul with whom I had a fantastic chat as we covered the distance I’d set myself even if it took a lot longer than my wildly optimistic calculations had led me to expect.

I don’t think I was the only one more focused on talking than navigating, and although the route was intended to be a straight out-and-back, we managed to converge back on the hostel from a number of different directions, soaked with sweat and with thighs burning from the slopes.

I only wish I’d managed to video one of the group as he edged between – then over – two barbed wire fences while wearing the skimpiest of running shorts trying to short cut back onto the path. Disaster avoided, and incurring filthy looks from the poor guy trying to clean the kitchen around us, we all finally tucked into cake and lunch (mostly cake – cake had been on the kitlist for everyone, so we had a lot of it) before heading home in the early afternoon. I ate a lot of cake. It felt like we’d earned it.

At the end of the day, this is how you run a training camp. Keep it short and simple and inexpensive and let everyone do their bit. Next year is going to be even easier for the club to arrange and I suspect there will be a lot more demand based on the experience this time. I just wish we could do it again next week too.