After Easter, I spent eight days in Spain with the Academic Sports Association Zurich (ASVZ), in a triathlon camp. Master organiser Ueli sent us the program a few days in advance: yellow is theory, blue is swimming, green is cyling and red is running. Green/red is bike/run intervals, and red/blue an aquathlon.

The main focus of the camp was on cycling with four longer tours, the rest was “fillers”. Basically everything was voluntary and everybody could attend whatever they wanted. Some people came for cycling only, some had problems preventing them from running, but the plan was really flexible and could be tailored to anybody’s needs.

I made it a sport to attend every single session; clearly I could profit a lot from going to all the swimming, and bike/run bricks are nothing I have done often before. Needless to say that the evenings ended early for me and I didn’t have much trouble falling asleep.

The week was thus a lot of this:

The pool water was very cold, so we always swam with our wetsuits on. Sometimes we did a bit of open water swimming:

But, as mentioned, the main thing to do was cycling. Here we are taking a break:

I’m wearing the sleeveless jersey I bought in a (obviously futile) attempt to get tanned shoulders. At least I could avoid the ultra sharp upper arm tan lines.

Running was done either as part of a brick or as a light footing in the morning:

And sometimes, we did some stretching/strengthening, but more as an input for our own training.

The most tri-specific activities were the bike/run intervals with lots of transitions from bike to run and back:

Plus the aquathlon on the last day:

I’m pretty sure the blue guy is lapping me. And I’m absolutely sure Kaspar behind me is cruising at about 40% effort, because he wouldn’t be behind me otherwise. The aquathlon was the only time I swam without wetsuit in the pool, and it was cold! There are some super unflattering pictures of my starting “dive” (which I can’t do because I lose my goggles if I try) and I hereby decide not to publish them.

All in all, I had a great time, mainly thanks to the great people who came along:

Pictured: uncounted Ironman finishes and Kona participations, a 3rd place (AG) in Kona, one Ironman Pro licence, Gigathlon Single finishes, some ultra trail stuff and much much more… awesome.

These are the four cycling tours we did (about 600 km overall):

And a bit of running (really just a bit, about 35 km):

I’ll be back next year, for sure. I’m actually still waiting for the “camp effect” to kick in, but as far as swimming goes, I certainly see some progress. I did some races to put the effect to a test, reports to come!