The home straight



With only three more sleeps until I travel back to London, the end of this camp is in sight.  So far i'm pleased with the progressions I have made (you always want more though!), and envisage this will translate into a step on at my performances at sea-level.  My split times are [on average] a couple of seconds better than this camp last year, with a significantly better lactate score (I will come to the meaning of this later).  We have two days of training left, two more opportunities to improve further still.  My back is improving, but can be frustrating at times.

Today I was on the ergo twice, once for some work pieces and once for a longer paddle.  This afternoon I have been recharging my batteries and receiving physio.

The last week has followed a similar routine but I did spice things up with a trip down into the village on our last half-day.  Moe, James and I went down on the ski-lift; I thought I would blend in with the locals and leave the restraining bar up, this only helped confirm my fear of heights and I spent the 10 minute journey trying to "man-up" but in reality just got cramp in my forearms from gripping so hard.  Brendan was voted our athletes rep and Sam and I have been enjoying my stash of Rhubarb and Custard sweets.

In my last post I mentioned the morning monitoring we use daily while on camp.  Most days we follow a similar routine.  After seeing Homer I head to breakfast, the breakfast here is shocking - dried bread rolls are a high-point.  When I went into the village I bought some Kelloggs Cornflakes as the fluorescent yellow cardboard served in the canteen was not hitting the spot. 

At 8am our first session starts (weights or ergo).  Our strength and conditioning coach (Alex of the EIS) is out here with us, so we receive top class coaching on our technique.  Jurgen has made it his mission to increase our bench pull scores and has been cracking the whip hard.  On the ergo we sometimes complete the mileage in one hit or we can put a break in at just over the half-way point.  Whenever we stop, Homer will take a blood sample from our earlobes.  This will then be analysed in 60 seconds to give us a lactate reading.  This reading will give us an idea of how the body is coping.  Everyone has experienced the lactate "burn", this helps put a number on how much lactic acid is circulating in our system.  We look to hold our lactate at roughly 2.0 mMol concentration.  We do this to maximise the endurance adaptation to the training.  When we do work pieces we also take the lactate, but this will be a gauge of how hard we have worked rather than a target concentration.

We then have second breakfast at 10am.  At 11am we will start the second session (generally weights or ergos).  Lunch is at 1pm and afternoon tea is at 5pm.  We will start our third session at 4pm and go into tea when finished.  After tea we will complete our final session; this is usually a more varied session - e.g. football, swimming etc.  At 8pm dinner is served.  10pm bedtime.  Repeat 16 times.