I know I’m supposed to be keen into anything and everything cycling, but the words “bike camp” fill me with dread. Yes, great base training bla-di-bla, but the night before leaving, I wondered what on earth I was doing. I’d willingly signed up for 7 hours of flying with all the uncertainty of connecting flights and 300 bucks worth of bike transport fees, to go bike for 3-6 hours a day for 5 days straight, including an ascent of Mount Lemmon. In a desert. Why? No really…so, I kept a mini diary in case it shed light on the matter.
Day 0
Glad I arrived early; I get to decompress although I want to try to build my own bike instead of waiting for the coaches to help. I’m mechanically challenged, but I get out my Ratchet Rocket Lite NTX and “give it a go”. I’m OK until the handlebars which take me 30 minutes with my husband on speakerphone and me sending him photos, “Does this look right to you? What are these long screws for?” Finally, success! Nice bit of confidence boost. I take a glass of wine and watch the sun go down.
Day 1
60-mile loop around Tucson. Nothing too hard to start with, it’s a perfect chance to wind up the legs and get to know my fellow riders. It’s great one of my teammates came; also, a couple ladies from a “rival” women’s team in the city – always happy to get to know my fellow racers better. Determined to save my legs I practice smooth drafting, but I keep gapping around corners and manage to spend 45 minutes in zones 4-6. Coaches take us through cornering skills at end of day to ready us for the descent of Mount Lemmon tomorrow; that’s a nice reminder but now I’m just worried about the ascent and then hanging on another 3 days.
Day 2
90 miles including a 7000ft ascent of Mount Lemmon over 29 miles. My coach can tell I’m nervous and he babysits me the first 10 miles, making sure I stick to zone 3 and distracting me with some good bike conversation. He leaves me in good spirits, but by the time I make it to our halfway SAG stop, I’m suffering. My breathing is ragged, I feel nauseous and can’t figure out why, and I’m upset because I seem to be going slower than last year. Coach 2 is biking up and down the mountain to check on everyone, asks if I’m OK, am I hydrating, eating…I tell him I’m fine and then I walk away from the van to hide a full-on anxiety attack. I tell myself to stay positive and just get the f*ck over it and with that in mind I start climbing again. A few minutes later I’m back with my coach, sitting on his wheel trying to find my own rhythm from his steady pace. But despite my best efforts I feel worse and start to slump over my bike. I make it to 8000ft before pulling over and crumpling on the asphalt, too short on breath.
Coach helps me stand and gets me to box breathe. That calms me but I still feel sick as a dog. My teammate pulls up too and checks I’m OK, she’s ready to sabotage her own day and come back down with me if needed, but Coach won’t leave me anyway and we descend together.
Turns out to be the best descent I’ve ever made. Keen to salvage some biking joy from the mountain and with the cornering drills fresh in my mind, I push the nausea to one side and start hammering, playing around with the feel of controlling my lean and the lines. Maybe I’ll throw up but at least I’ll do it smiling.
At the bottom, Coach gets me to hydrate and then we pedal home easy together, sometimes chatting, sometimes him pulling me through the headwinds. If he was ever worried in all this, he never showed it.
Altitude sickness – who knew? There’s another notch of experience to put on my belt. Best ride fail ever.
Day 3
Today is scheduled for the Tucson shootout followed by a climb up Madeira Canyon, but I’m still feeling sick so I get some extra sleep & pedal easy for a couple hours by myself, exploring downtown. With the sun on my face and no pressure on pace I finally start to relax. There’s a coach’s roundtable discussion in the evening where the camp mechanic talks about learning to listen to your bike as closely as you do to your body. That’s gold dust advice right there; it makes me appreciate how much of a bike novice I am right now; I vow to improve.
Day 4
I wake up chipper and ready for some fun! The day’s ride is 70 miles to Saguaro West and do the 8-mile loop a few times. I follow the coaches around…we talk cornering and crit skills and what I can work on to stay smooth and use less watts. Then I sit in a close draft and make them bike really fast so my pigtails go flying behind me and I’m still barely working. Just like a playground ride!
Day 5
50 miles around Saguaro East. Yeah, I’m done – this is Eyes Up, Look Ahead and Bike Slow day. Actually, these cacti are growing on me. I’m from Wales and more of a rugged-green scenery kind of girl, but I finally start to appreciate the otherworldly beauty and how the stark difference to my usual NY routes feels refreshing to my mind. Today has a bike touring – not training – feel.
Conclusion
Why bike camp? Because it was a great learning experience; it has super-experienced coaches and a mechanic who are skilled at spotting and handling any kind of issue effectively without drama; it teaches you to get through that tunnel of fatigue and out the other side and still be pedaling strong; because a forest of cacti is actually pretty cool and because it captures everything that biking should be.
Thanks to enduranceWERX for a smashing bike camp.
Eyes Up, Look Ahead 