Rory MacMillan's Report

Over Easter the Durham University Triathlon team travelled to Cesenatico, on the East Coast of central Italy, for a week-long training camp. We all flew into Bologna airport, and after a few long trains, arrived at our hotel. There was a lovely open water training pool, mountains for riding and gravel trails to run on – a perfect setting for our camp. Over the week, we would spend each day doing the three disciplines of Triathlon – swim, bike and run – in order to push on our fitness in a focused way and prepare for our main BUCS races in the summer term.

 

Each morning our coach ran a swimming session that lasted for 1 hour. For swimming, it was difficult getting into the pool with the cold morning air, but in the water it was warmer. In the week I covered 25 kilometers in the pool – the most I’ve ever done in a week. By the Sunday it’s safe to say I was mentally as well as physically exhausted from the swimming. With the others around me, though, it helped push harder at the end of the week. It really helped make big improvements, especially as we had to swim in a lake in our main race, so we practiced some techniques that would help us, including ‘sighting’ to see buoys and navigate, as well as ‘drafting’ to save energy by swimming just behind someone.

 

After a swim and some (lots of!) breakfast, we split off into groups for our various cycle rides. Often on these camps people go off and ride long distances of over 100km a day, but this wouldn’t help us for the 40km biking section of our races to come. A faster group of 8 of us would go off for more specific training rides on some days. We did every other day as a focused training ride and the others we did as longer rides. For example, on one day we rode to San Marino, which was around 120km (see photo at the top!). On another day we would only do about 80km, but with specific race paced efforts to push ourselves. These are very beneficial sessions for the races, but very tough! As a smaller group we pushed each other to the max until you drop off and can’t keep up. This was good for me as cycling is a stronger discipline, but still a challenge to work with others.

 

Normally we’d take lunch with us on the bikes but if not, after a snack at the hotel, we’d head out in groups or pairs for an easy jog, or a specific run session. For me the camp was a real challenge of physical and mental fitness (racking up 30 hours of training over the week), but also learning about the sport itself and working together with a group in a high intensity environment.

 

Working together with people to support them through the week was great, and despite some close calls with the sometimes dangerous Italian drivers, the completely drained feeling by the end of the week and some tired muscles, we had plenty of gelato, some great moments and an unforgettable week.

 

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