Augusta TRI training camp
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| Our wrist band that got us in to everything and also had a number on it that identified us to our camp records in case of an emergency. |
Couple months ago I received an email from brian@tricoachgeorgia.com offering
a camp for the half iron distance in Augusta.
I had heard about this camp through a friend that had attended and she
highly recommended it especially for someone like me that has never done a half
iron distance. She told me that I would
get to swim, bike and run the actual course that I would be doing for the
race. I was excited and ready to register as soon as they open registration. I talked one of my friends that is also doing
the race into going with me. We had been
counting down the days until camp. We
were so looking forward to seeing the area and learning the course.
Just a few days before camp we received an email with this
info……
“Final preparations are being made for your arrival next weekend. It
has been very hot all summer in Augusta and we hope you have been training
outdoors and are acclimated to the heat. We have an agenda for you that
outlines the overall weekend and hopefully it will provide you with enough
information to help you plan for the trip. You
should pack as if you are racing three separate days. Don't forget your
swim goggles and all related swim gear such as swim caps and anti-fog solution.
Bring your bike, bike shoes and tire pump. Bring running shoes, running hat and
sunglasses. Don't forget anti-chaffing products and sunscreen. Towels will be
helpful as you will be sweat soaked after each session. “
I was not looking forward to the HOT part of camp. It’s been so hot this summer that for the
first time in years, I’m actually ready for WINTER! Summer has always been one of my favorite
times, but this year the heat has just been unbearable.
So here’s my recap of camp. I’ll
try to be brief, but you know me…… I love to tell details.
I’m not sure why, but Kathy & I both forgot about the time change!
It never hit us that we’d be losing an hour until I noticed our estimated
arrival time on my GPS being an hour later than I had anticipated. We did the same thing when we went to Atlanta
to do Ragnar a few months ago! You’d think we would have learned the first time.
LOL I guess we were just too excited and
nervous about camp.
Check in for camp was noon on Friday.
I had thought we would arrive in Augusta in time to have lunch, check
into hotel and get to camp check-in by noon.
Well, that didn’t happen! We barely made it to camp check in at
12:50pm! Since the Friday bike ride was
not scheduled to start till 2pm, I told Kathy we should be ok. However, we were still stressing. We did not have on our bike clothes yet, we still had to go check in at the camp registration table, and make sure we ate something. We decided to just eat a peanut butter
sandwich we happen to have in our cooler while driving up to park by the boathouse. This was the meeting place every day for camp. We jumped out of the car and quickly went to
the check in table. I laughed and told
them we totally forgot about the time change coming from Mississippi. We quickly went back to the car and unloaded
our bikes, checked our tires, started getting our water bottles ready and
changed clothes in the back seat of my car!
There was nowhere to change but a porta potty and it was like 100
degrees, so we did not want to go inside one of them to change. I left the car running while we changed. We didn’t even care that it was in broad daylight.
My windows are slightly tinted. All we knew was we needed to get changed and
get our bikes in position to start. And did
I mention it was HOT!
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| Waiting to start...boy it was HUMID |
When we
got about 4-5 miles out, there was a big sign that said welcome to South
Carolina. It ended up that most of the
biking miles were in South Carolina. It
as an extremely HOT ride. We figured
there would be hills, but until you are on them on a bike you don’t realize how
big of hills! Luckily I had drank a good
bit of water on the ride to Augusta. I had
to keep stopping for bathroom breaks, but I wanted to be hydrated due to the
heat. When we arrived back at our cars
from the bike ride, Kathy and I were both drenched in sweat. She went straight to the coolers and drank
several big glasses of water. The bike ride was 32 miles.
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| Ready to do Friday swim! |
Next we had a swim practice scheduled at 5pm and I was ready to get in
the cold water (they said it would be cold), but I sure didn’t want to pull
that wetsuit on my hot sweaty body! I
looked around and people were putting theirs on so I dried off and began the
task of putting it on. If you’ve ever
put one on, you know it’s like putting on a pair of tights that are way too
little. Some people put Vaseline on
their bodies to make them slide on easier.
We even saw one guy using Kroger grocery store bags. He said they work awesome. I may have to try that eventually. Anyway, we got our suits on and it was time
to hit the water. The coach said we
could swim as much as we like. There was
no planned course. Just jump in and
swim. It just so happen a lady was
standing beside me that said to me as I was about to go get in… “You know it’s
going to be upstream don’t you?” I had
actually been wondering because I had heard him say this will be the swim exit
on race day. I knew the swim was
downstream (hey..that’s why I picked this race as my first!), so I was
wondering if we were fixing to swim upstream or go further downstream. As we got closer to the water, he said swim
out and back and pointed upstream. Oh
and it was COLD! When we jumped it, it took my breath for a second. Very cold water! However, it felt great after that bike
ride!
So Kathy and I swam out for 20
minutes and then swam back in for 10 minutes.
Yep, it took us half the time to come in as going out. I was
shocked. That concluded our Friday
workouts. We were tired and hungry. I told Kathy that I didn’t even care if we
took a bath. All I wanted to do was get
checked in the hotel and go get some food.
All we had that day was breakfast and a little peanut butter sandwich. I didn’t even put on makeup! So unlike
me. :<>) I was so glad our hotel was less than a mile
from where we had to go every day for camp.
We quickly checked in, changed clothes and headed to Nacho Mama’s.
I had seen people posting about eating here on our Augusta TRI
page. They all raved about how good it
was and it was right down from our hotel.
We knew we needed to eat some food with salt and what better way to get
some salt than Nachos! The food was
great and tons of it! Kathy and I could have shared our meal! I saw several campers in there eating and a
few of the coaches.
We went straight to bed because Saturday morning was GATOR FEST SWIM!
This is where we would
swim the 1.2 miles! I woke up very NERVOUS!
I had never swam 1.2 miles in open water. I was anxious to see how it would go. I knew this would tell me whether or not I
was ready for the ironman race coming up.
Kathy and I got dressed and really didn’t talk very much. I think we were both nervous. We arrived at the boat house parking area to
wait on our bus transportation to the swim start. Everyone was standing around laughing and
talking. Some were putting on their wetsuits
and some were toting them. I just sat
and watched while trying to keep my nerves at bay. A couple was at the same table with us and
one was going to do the 5K swim. They
offered two distances. You could pick
the 1.2 mile or the 3.1 mile swim. I was
sitting there in amazement that he was going to swim 3.1 miles! I just hoped I
could do the 1.2 miles with no freak outs.
We were about to load the bus and Kathy and I noticed two young boys putting
on wetsuits. One was tiny! Looked to be
8-9 years old. His wetsuit was so cute! So
wished I had got a picture but we had left our phones in the car. It had ironman stuff on it. Kathy asked him if he was swimming the 1.2
miles and he smiled and said yes. It was
also his first time to do that distance.
So Kathy and I told ourselves, if he can…. we can. :>)
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| Our wave about to start! I'm looking at my watch waiting.. |
BTW that kid won overall by swimming the
distance in 21 minutes and his brother swam it in 25 minutes! WOW! Their dad
was one of the coaches for the camp also.
So….. Guess what? I swam the 1.2 miles!! YIPPIE. My watch said 37 minutes but their timing
machine said 36. Either way, I’ll take
it! I had worried myself sick wondering if I could make the 1 hour 10 minute
cutoff. I only had a couple brief freak
outs when the grassy moss stuff wrapped around my arm. Some parts of the river were clean and others
were very grassy. The first time I hit
the stuff it really stopped me in my tracks.
I had to tell myself to just keep swimming. However in my mind I was also saying… please
don’t let there be a gator in this stuff! I was so worried about gators. Praise the Lord I didn’t see one! I hope and
pray I don’t see one on race day either.
I was so excited when I finished.
Kathy and I were side by side during the swim for a while and then I
lost her. I tend to pull to the left
when I swim. So when I got out of the
water I was looking for her and there she was standing up on the bank waiting. I hugged her tightly.
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| YES>> we SWAM that! |
It felt so good to know that we had both just
swam the course! It was an amazing
feeling of accomplishment. The one thing
that had kept me worried this whole time while training was the swim
portion. I knew I could struggle through
a hilly bike course and jog/walk 13.1 miles in the heat, but I was worried
about doing the swim until after I finished gator fest! I was so very happy I had made the decision to
come to camp! It was just what I needed! And as the saying goes... TRUST YOUR TRAINING>> all the hours in the pool had helped me!
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| After we finished! |
After they did awards for the swim (it was an actual swim race where
people that weren’t doing camp….were doing the swim race), we were instructed
to change clothes and be ready to run.
Now it’s getting close to lunch time by now and HOT! However, they kept telling us this would
prepare us for race day. We were told
that we could pick whether we ran 2 loops or 1 loop. I told Kathy we would run 2 before really thinking
that thought through! That soon changed
after we got mid-way into the 1st loop. It was miserable HOT. We even made a game out of it just to get
through the 7 mile loop. We would run in
the sun and walk the shaded areas. We did anything to try to beat the
heat. They had given us samples of base
salt to try.
I had never used the stuff,
but I sure used it on the run and the next day on the bike ride! My
clothes were soaking wet. I bet I could
have taken them off and squeezed a whole glass of water out of them. We decided 1 loop was enough for us. We were released to go have a late lunch and
then report back at 4:30pm for a briefing on camp and instructions on the bike
ride for Sunday which would be the 56 miles we would ride on race day. We were so happy to get a couple hours
off. We headed to get lunch first at
another local place that everyone had raved about called Farmhaus Burgers. I didn’t get all dressed to go eat this time
either! No time for trivial stuff like that when you are famished. The burgers were amazing and I even had a gluten
free bun and it was awesome!
We both
crashed in our hotel afterwards. We didn’t
turn on the TV or really talk. We both
kind of napped and tried to recoup from all the heat and training.
At our 4:30 meeting they served us appetizers and had several
speakers. The were all good. But first Brian the head coach
told us that we were the most “fit” group they had at camp. I was shocked. He said that in the previous year after the Friday
swim they worried about several people completing the iron distance race. He said our group showed much more
fitness. He said we should all do great
on race day. :<>) They went over details on the bike ride and
informed us that a bridge was out so the route had to be changed a little. Two more big hills were added. L He said they didn’t expect the bridge to be
fixed by race day, so the detoured course would most likely be the route on
race day. I didn’t realize it until he
was talking but the 32 miles we rode on Friday were the last half of the race
course. So Sunday we would see the full
course. They kept stressing the size of
the hills. Kathy and I left the meeting
feeling pretty good about camp and looking forward to the bike ride on
Sunday. We were hungry again and knew we
needed to fuel up for that 56 mile bike ride the next morning. We walked and ended up at a pizza place on
the same street as the other places we’d eaten and it too was amazing. It was called “The Pizza Joint”. It's kind of hidden so you have to be looking for it.
I don’t think we could of had better food for
the weekend. Again we went straight to
bed after we organized and packed up everything, but our bike stuff. We knew we had to check out of the hotel
before the bike ride. At camp they told
us that the local Y would be open for us to shower after the bike ride if we
needed to before driving home.
Sunday morning arrived sooner than we wanted. We wanted to sleep in! We arrived and parked
early. We knew there would be others at the
bike ride since it was an actual bike ride called “Ride for a Reason”. People could register that were not part of
the camp. I really like how the camp people
organized the camp around the swim race and bike ride. It made it more like it would be on race day
with tons of people. Here’s a pic of us
about to start the bike ride.
As soon as we got off on the bike route, I realized why they kept
talking about the hills. It was a
constant uphill battle. I kept looking at my Garmin thinking this is taking
longer than usual for me. I also
realized why when Brian has mixed me up a sample of UCAN he looked at me kind
of funny when he asked how long I thought the ride might take me and I smiled
and said a little over 3 hours. He must
have been thinking this girl is good. LOL
It was a tough & challenging ride. My total ride time was 3:44, which was longer
than I had expected. After the ride,
Kathy and I both said to each other… “It’s going to take us around 4 hours no
matter what to complete the bike ride, stop at aid stations & transition with those hills.” I had hope to maybe do it in 3:30 or slightly
less, but not so sure now. However on race day I do plan to be more "fresh".. not tired from 2 days of workouts already. Back here in
Mississippi I can do 56 miles in close to 3 hours. But not on those hills!
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| Notice Elevation Gain... almost 2,000! |
We were sitting inside eating and cooling off
after the bike ride while talking to a lady that has done ironman in Chattanooga. She told us that the bike ride in Augusta is
much tougher than Chattanooga. I would
have never thought that. After we finished
eating we went to the Y to shower and change for the 8 hour drive home! Boy was I glad the Y let us shower!! There is
no way I could have rode home in those stinky clothes.
So we completed camp!
It was just
like he said in his email …. Prepare for 3 days of racing. Our bodies sure felt like we had raced 3 days
in a row! We took turns driving home and
stopped several times to stretch. We
were both wore slam out and the 8 hour drive didn't help matters. It was an
awesome camp and I highly recommend it to anyone training for a 70.3 distance
or if you are doing Augusta. It’s a
beautiful town. We stayed at the Holiday
Inn on Broad Street and it was the perfect spot! We walked to all the food places and could have walked to the swim start. Close to race start for the ironman race. I feel much better prepared for the race now. Here's a pic of Coach Brian Patterson. He cuts you no slack. Notice their wording on tent.. DO YOUR JOB>> I highly recommend the camp! It was well organized and you learn a lot about the race course and your endurance. It was worth every penny of the $175 and travel expenses!
I still know that it’s
going to be HARD on race day. There is no way for it to not be hard when
you combine 3 sports into one day. It will
be challenging, but so worth it. I’m looking forward to completing the
ironman 70.3 distance on September 25!
What's even more cool is after I got back home I received a private message on Facebook. My cousin was at the camp! She's on the TRI Augusta board. I knew I had several cousins that lived in South Carolina, but I had no idea one would be at camp much less a triathlete also. I so wished we had gotten together. We probably haven't seen each other since we were tots. Plus I'm several years older than her. Her grandfather and my grandfather were brothers. They've both been gone several years now. Usually at Thanksgiving the Hill Clan has a big family reunion, but as some of the older Hill's have passed away some of the out of town relatives don't come every year any more. Hopefully we will get together at the actual race in September. :<>)
Happy Training!
D
