Hawaii Ironman Video

Aerobic Volume Camps

Dana and I just returned from our second aerobic volume camp in Tucson, AZ. We stayed at the Cycling house http://www.thecyclinghouse.com/ . Evan, Owen, and Andy were excellent hosts and made our stay there a comfortable one. The cycling house is fully stocked with Hammer Nutrition products. The 53 X11 coffee really got us going in the morning. http://www.53x11coffee.com/

They also made us gourmet food. We lived like pro triathletes for a week. We met a few other athletes there and seemed to have formed some lasting relationships.

In our first camp in February, we covered 37 hrs of training in the week just at low heart rates. We did some hard rides including Madeira canyon and Mt. Lemmon but we kept the intensity to a minimum.

The second camp a month later in March we included the same volume but some intensity in all sports. I chose to do my intense cycling sessions on the bike which included two climbs to the summit of Mt. Lemmon, 27 miles at 6-8% grade. The last climb was the hardest taking me a little over 2hrs at a 148 average heart rate. I ended up going 101 miles on the day adding in volume plus intensity. This ride really busted my ass. Dana did a similar workout but we took a break at the top to eat some of the famous pie served at the Mt. Lemmon cafe.

Epic volume or "crash training" as it also may be known, has been found to improve fitness by as much as 7% at a time. See this link below. http://www.serpentine.org.uk/advice/coach/fh19.php The real challenge is not so much the training but allowing oneself to recover the following week. It takes a lot of will power to hold off and let the training absorb. This has worked well for Dana and I in the past. Maybe it can work for you too. This is what we do on our vacation without the kids. Um, I wonder if the kids might want to do this with us in the future?