GEC's High Endurance Ironman Training Camp--Day 5

Guest Blogger: Shawn

After yesterday’s epic downpour, the campers were hoping for some better weather today. Since the lightning cut our big ride short yesterday, the call was to move a little extra bike volume today, rather than having it be a lighter day per the schedule. Unfortunately, the cool and cloudy weather was here to stay. The original plan was to swim early and ride from the swim venue, but the GEC staff made a game-time decision to ride early instead, in an attempt to beat the rain.

We loaded our bikes and run gear onto the truck and rolled out at 7. It was raining a bit and the temperature was about 50 degrees. That’s right, straight up Seattle weather, people. As we drove out of town, the temp continued to drop and the roads got wetter. Campers: skeptical.

Shortly we pulled into the visitor center at the Sunset Crater National Monument and got rolling. Within a mile of the parking lot, the roads were dry and the sky had lightened. The route was an out-and-back, approximately 30 miles each way. The ride started with some steep rollers by a moonscape of 1,000 year old lava flows (they didn’t look a day over 20, btw), then over 20 miles of steady decent down to the valley floor. A drop of well over 3,000 feet over that distance, but on almost perfectly smooth new blacktop and basically zero traffic.

Luc, Owen, and I knew not to pass this up and started rotating, doing well over 35mph for mile after mile down the shallow grade. Soon we discovered that Brian and Bill were attempting to catch us, which just wouldn’t do, so we picked it up a bit and kept our momentum. But each of us was thinking about what the return trip was going to be like after all that descending.

As always, Jill was out covering the route and picking just the right resupply points. We stopped to get more water and Brian and Bill linked up with us about 6 miles from the turn around. Polita rolled in shortly after as well, and Angie had turned back just a little before.

After 5 days of complaining about the altitude getting me down, I was starting to feel better today. One of the things Brian and Bill have been helping me work through is my ongoing saga of difficulty getting calories down on the bike. Bill had the good idea of lowering my sights a bit to 200 cals an hour to see how that went. Brian thought I should try to get more clean water down as well – versus just NUUN water from prior days. This was one of my big focuses today. So some adjustment to the altitude plus a better experience getting fuel in me really made a big difference in how I felt. The ride back up that grade was a lot of fun as we pacelined at 20-25mph into the wind, up a long hill. Awesome stuff, and the ride back went fast, with just one refuel stop.

Brian and I went off the front a bit in the last few miles, where the climbs got steeper. That guy can turn power out of the saddle for what seems like forever. Ouch. Not to be outdone, Luc managed to catch us just before the finish of the ride. What a machine that guy is.

We all made it back to the parking lot about the same time, and it was time to run. Jill had picked out a trail run for us that “started out uphill”. The plan was for an hour run. 25 minutes into it, we had gained 1000 feet on a road that had to be a 15-20% grade in some places, and run-walk was the only way to hold it together. Any energy we had left in us was left on that trail! So we headed back down and got the balance on the run out on the road. Mmmm, pavement.

A great workout and really great logistics on the part of the GEC staff on turning what could have been a rough day into an absolutely great training day in all aspects. Between training out to the Grand Canyon and today’s outstanding workout, we’ve had some great highlights.

This afternoon we went for a swim at the local pool. The pool ended up being an odd length 20ish yard pool, but we did a quick workout and then got a chance to have our swim videoed and analyzed by a truly top notch swimmer, which is a rare opportunity.

It was a great day in Flagstaff!

Shawn