Ireland’s leading triathlete, Aileen Morrison has already qualified for the London Olympics and is training flat out to get herself into the shape of her life ahead of her biggest ever race. In this dispatch, she outlines the relentless effort at a recent altitude training camp, where time off was for losers.
Location: Sierra Nevada mountains, southern Spain.
Date: February 2012
Mission: Altitude training camp with Triathlon Ireland squad and Caroline Ryan cyclist
Having taken to Sierra Nevada for an altitude camp, we don’t have many options for riding on the flat. So we ride for an hour or so near Granada then climb back up to the altitude centre at 2,350m; 31km in two hours or so. On our fifth occasion, yesterday my gear lever broke 30 minutes into the ride. With gears kind of necessary for hilly riding, I detour to the bike shop.
Advertisement
In my best Spanish: “Hola, la plancha este roto. Puede arreglar esto?” No he can’t because he doesn’t have SRAM but he’s going to order it in for me and will have it on Friday, grand job. However, “Vivo en sierra, y no me gusta doce (pointing to the 12 ring), solo par hoy, es posible poner aqui, vienteseis? (I point to 26).” I meet back up with the others in the camp and manage fine heading back ‘home’ on my single speed for two hours. Having ‘un poco de espanol’ is handy enough.
Tommy Evans our cycling coach has taken over from Chris Jones the Triathlon Ireland performance director and head coach. He’s also taken over Declan the physiologist, and is monitoring our hydration, hematocrit and haemoglobin levels. Today he’s driving the van with one hand and holding the go-pro camera with the other. He is indeed a man of many talents.
On the climb on Monday he instructed us to ride 30 minutes steady. Then 30 minutes of intervals one minute fast and one minute easy. After a wee break we rode 20 minutes alternating in and out of the saddle; i.e. one minute sit, one minute stand. All this while the RTE camera-man films and I’m trying to look like I’m having fun.
Of course cycling is only a quarter of the battle. We also have swimming, running and gym work to do. I do around 25 hours training per week. Apart from the bike sessions, that weekly workload would include six swims of 90 minutes each. The run work would be broken into six to eight sessions per week. We do long aerobic runs, hill running repetitions, and track sessions. I also have two gym sessions per week. Forgot to mention; in our three weeks training here in Spain we get one day off. Hallelujah!
Related News
So far the hardest session was the track workout 8x(2x400 r45, break 3mins) that is; 8 sets of 2 by 400meters. At all-out pace and trying to negative split. For those who aren’t familiar with the track, that’s 16 laps of the track with a break after each. But the 40x50s speed set in the pool with minus oxygen on the first week wasn’t too much craic either.
Anyhow it’s been a great camp so far, with fellow triathletes Gavin Noble, Conor Murphy & cyclist Caroline Ryan ahead of her London World Cup last weekend. Best of luck in the months head to my new room buddy. She'd make a good triathlete; she's not adverse to a bit of hard work.
Happy cycling.
Aileen
http://www.aileenmorrison.com/
Twitter - @aileenmorr
Tommy Evans takes the all important blood samples during another track session in Spain
Morrison gets the miles in at altitude
Topics
