NECTC Athlete Development Camp 2010 Report

It all started on a rainy Thursday afternoon when we all gradually got together at the hotel, introduced ourselves and headed over for a dinner at Moes’.

The real fun started on Friday morning. At the pool, we were divided into two groups, each of which spent half of the time recording a multiple-angle video with Bill Steele and half of the time swimming with Dave Lipsius. The video was a new learning tool for most of the athletes. In my group, Bill pointed out obvious good and not-so-good features of our strokes, so that we could focus on our shortcomings during the following workout with Dave. The more detailed video and analysis of our swimming was posted on Bill’s website a few days after the camp. After lunch we headed over to the Excel Workout gym and met Sharon and John, who first introduced us to dynamic warm-up and a little painful, but undoubtedly useful foam rolling, and then divided us into two groups – the first group spent an hour doing challenging circuit training with Sharon, while the rest of us tried some basic weight lifting (squat, dead-lift…) with John. We got back together at yoga with Dave, which, at least for me, was very challenging because of the long times we had to hold some poses. However, the final relaxation put our EMT Chris to sleep :-) The yoga was immediately followed by a workout and video session at NYIT track. By this time, most of us were pretty tired, so the 5x800 sets were quite a challenge, but rewarded by a video from 3 angles, later analyzed and commented on Bill’s website. We finished the day with a huge dinner at Friday’s.

The next day, we headed over to the ocean. Divided into two groups one more time, we first swam with Bill to and around the buoys, got some more open-water tips and recorded a video of our sighting. The transitions were lots of fun with lots of theory, demonstration, practice and sharing tips between each other. The most valuable to me was learning about and practicing mounting and dismounting, even though I acquired several bruises there. In the afternoon, we had a training run through the beautiful NYIT campus, followed by more strength training at Excel. After a big dinner catered to Excel, John, Sharon and Seth taught us quite a bit about triathlon-specific strengthening, common injuries and nutrition, followed by a yoga-meditation with Dave where some people again meditated all the way to sleep :-)

Sunday was a pure training day with a choice of swim or run in the early morning, followed by a 45-mile ride with Sharon and Dave, interspersed with lots of attacks :-) The camp ended with a bagel-and-leftover reception in front of Excel, after which we said goodbye and promised to see each other in Boston (all camp participant were from BU, NU and MIT).

The camp was a great way to not only improve my triathlon knowledge and to supplement my training, but also to meet new people with similar interests.