Juniors Camp

The first ever AMD-Discovery Channel Junior training camp, hosted by Jeff Angermann, turned out to be a great success. After a long and tiring drive, five juniors and three parents arrived at the beautiful and spacious house in Truckee and sat down to dinner thoughtfully prepared by our host. Tasty BBQ and spaghetti filled us up for a good nights sleep.

The next morning, after a filling breakfast of pancakes, french toast, bacon, crumpets, and more, the juniors went out for a quick ride. Attempting to breathe in the thin air quickly warmed us up for the pain to come. Jeff’s partner, Dr. Andrew Pasternak, arrived, and he and Jeff began setting up the equipment for the lactate threshold testing.

The Lactate Threshold Step Test was designed with pain in mind, not a little but a lot. We started at a low wattage, and every four minutes we had to push an additional 40 watts. Along with the increase in power we had our blood lactate levels taken. After a few base levels of blood lactate, the pain really started to begin. Pedaling on the computrainer for about half an hour was all I could take, and when I was done I couldn’t have been happier. I don’t think I could have lasted nearly as long without the encouragement of Jeff and Andy. When all the Juniors had finished their rides of pain we had some time to relax and refuel before the afternoon festivities began.

All the Juniors were eager to hear about the team building exercise that Jeff had designed. When it was finally explained to us, we were ready to begin. Our quest was to ride around the area with the aid of an unlabeled map and find 5 out of 6 markers that Jeff had positioned by the side of the road. As our team rolled off, we made sure that we knew where we were on the map, and where the markers were relative to our current location. After quickly picking up the first few markers, we realized that our opponents had not picked up any. Confident that we had an insurmountable lead, we all took a hard look at the map and decided to go for all the markers. After a delay due to confused parent supervisors, we finally started to head back. We arrived home with our lead intact and celebrated our victory.

While the juniors were on their adventure, Jeff was hard at work printing out the results of the tests. Jeff reviewed the results with me, patiently answering dozens of questions. It was really cool to start to understand the relationship between exercise and science, and how I can apply that knowledge to improve my training and performance in the future.

The remainder of the day included preparing and consuming another scrumptious meal, and witnessing the arrival of some nice high tech time trial equipment when Kevin and Craig arrived and prepared for the next day’s race.

The next morning brought an early wake up call for the Juniors to head off the Sattley Time Trial. As always, the Juniors were the first to go off with times as early as 8 o’clock. Mind you this is no eight o’clock and 70 degrees. It was freezing as we unpacked and set up our trainers.

The excruciating pain of time trialing began and unfortunately it didn’t get easier as I continued, in fact got harder. As I approached the 10km turn around there was a bit of mix up with the officials where they were signaling me to turn around. Fortunately I knew I was not half way done and I made sure with a yell to the official and continued on my way. Sadly the 20km course has expansion cracks the entire way, so we had another 10km to go with a bump every 3 seconds. All I can remember from the last half of the time trial is how painful it was and how much I wanted it to stop. To think of it the lactate step test was just as painful as the time trial and I’m glad that I have less than five time trials a year.

The juniors (along with the masters) had excellent results in the time trial, so we hung around for some podium photo’s then rolled off for another ride. This time the goal was not pain but enjoyable climbing. Riding up to Yuba Pass at over 7000 feet of elevation was hard enough for my system, but we made it harder as we constantly attacked each other. A great morning of racing followed by a great afternoon ride could only end one way, with a long drive home. With a considerable amount of traffic and finals the next day I was able to study some and sleep a lot.

A terrific weekend, and many thanks to Jeff for putting it all together. And thanks to the parents for driving all us up.