California Training Camp Wrap Up

Three days back into Canada after my seven day training camp and we've had three days of snow. It's an easy decision to say I miss the SoCal sunshine. Having said that, I needed to come home - By the end of the seventh day my legs were too worn out to make anymore serious gains without several consecutive days of rest beforehand. By the end, my legs only had one speed, whether I was riding on flat ground or a grueling ascent. You try to will your legs on and you're not even feeling it cardio-wise, but your legs have essentially become tubes of concrete that keep spinning off of their own momentum and you can't put anymore energy into them. You just hope that they keep spinning an easy gear on their own.

Saturday was Day 6 of the training camp and as previously stated, my legs were feeling pretty worn out at this point. Adam decided it was prudent not to climb Gibraltar today and instead go for an easy spin on flat terrain. We did an easy spin on the road leading North to Ojai. Simple out and back ride that was about 80km over three and a half hours. We stopped at a park in Ojai just for a quick break and energy bar. Sitting in the sun and all of a sudden the thermometer on my Garmin shot up to 36C. Needless to say we stuck around a bit longer than needed just soaking up the warmth.

Ride to Ojai

The rest of the day was just spent stretching and rolling in the shack and lying in the sand on the beach. The wind picked up quite a bit so I dug a Chris-sized-hole in the sand to shelter me and still let me soak in the rays. More food and then onwards to Day 7!

Yay Day 7!

Ok so this was to be the final day of my training camp and the last chance I'd get to ride with everyone. This called for a ride of epic proportions. We drove to the same trails that we rode on Day 5 (albeit much further down the mountain) This time when we reached the top, we continued along the ridge rather than immediately heading back down. After traveling along the rode at the top for a bit, we took a descent that led us to the backside of the mountains. At this point we really found ourselves in the deep bush. We ended up going down several several trails until we found what we though t was the right one.

Not the right way, might as well snap a pic

The descents were hazardous with all of the thorn bushes on the side of the trail.I was following Adam down one of the trails and all I could hear was "ow......ow......OOWWW.....oww...oww" ad infinitum.
My legs are still scabbed over from all the cuts I got. They're still itchy too :(

Near Gibraltar Dam and an old abandoned building

As we continued on, it seemed more like we were on an old donkey trail - you could still feel the hoove marks = very bumpy. We finally came out of the bush around an old mining looking building and the Gibraltar Dam. My legs were pretty well and done at this point but we still had a super long climb back to the top and over. I slowly made my way to the top, way behind the others. At least the views on the way up were fantastic.

On the descent back down I could barely use my legs to keep standing on the bike. Once we hit pavement it was all downhill from there. We got back to the truck after just over five hours in the saddle, 60 km and 2200m of climbing.

Ride Map (forgot to turn it back on at one point)

So much climbing!

So I was dead after the ride, good thing it was the last one of the week. Monday was the flight home back to Canadaland and rest.

Side Note - Canada Customs now has electronic kiosks for citizens! So much win

It's always nice to hit the warm weather and blue skies...

But I missed my car

I'm kind of pissed at skiing right now though...

In closing, I must say that the trip overall was fantastic. Gorgeous weather, great company, 26 hours of great riding with NO FLATS. In fact no one flatted all week! And we were riding some of the sharpest rock gardens I've ever ridden in and still no issues. My goal now that I'm back is to make the best of the training I had in Cali and to continue building upon it - I can't let it go to waste. I'll be coming down from 26 hours to around 13-15 hours in weekly training time but I'll be making some slight changes to my diet and add some flexibility components to the usual routine. Hopefully all this work will have me dialed in an ready to go come the first race of the Ontario Cup season!

Review of my new Devinci Wooky to come....