Steffan Lloyd: July 2009

Last week our entire team went up to OWL rafting for 5 days, for our yearly OWL camp. We don't usually end up going rafting, we just use the premises as a training base for our camp, as the owners, Dirk and Claudia Van Wijk, are members of Nakkertok.

I came into this camp fully rested - I had just come off an off week and I was feeling (really) good. Good thing, because this camp was probably the most intense, high volume, high intensity and most awesome training camp I've been to in… ever. Tuesday we biked down to OWL rafting, about a 100 km ride away, then finished the day off with some rollerski strength on skis for an hour and a half or so. From there until Saturday, we trained usually about 4 hours each day, with either 1 or 2 interval sets every day (and not easy ones either). Saturday we did a "triathlon", then biked home, before doing one last hard workout Sunday. Today, monday, I'm writing this entry tired, taking the day off, and recovering with my compression socks.

I'm not going to go through every day of the camp and say every training we did… to be honest I kind of forget the order. I do know we did do the following over the 6 days:

2 100 km bike rides
A 7 minute running race
4 x 4 minutes running z3 high
2 strength on skis hill repeats
2 or 3 strength/core routines
z3 combo (skate/classic) intervals (see below for video!)
2 speed workouts (2 x 15 x 10 seconds with 20 seconds rest)
A 30 minute rollerski tempo workout
A scavenger hunt
A rollerski/running/swimming triathlon (more details below)
An epic stream run
Around 22 - 23 hours of training
Maybe I forgot some stuff

I guess a different approach than Thomsen - but I feel pretty fit as well (albeit a bit tired come the end of the week). Let me go into detail on a couple of those workouts.

The combo intervals were done up a hill, down the other side, then back up it, the resting down the original hill and then swapping gear from Classic to Skate or Skate to classic as fast as possible before starting again. These were done at high zone 3 pace, and were a lot of fun. My dad got it all on tape, so now you get to watch! On the classic sections, I was feeling strong and was able to pull away from the others, but in skate it was the opposite, and they would reel me back in.

Video of the combo intervals. With music.

Saturday we did a triathlon, which is somewhat of a tradition at the OWL camp. It started with 3-4 km of rollerskiing, followed by about a kilometre of running, then a swim out to a raft and back.

Right off the start Andrew broke his tip, which was unfortunate, and he dropped off in the rollerski. Mike, Aidan and I broke away from the rest and arrived together from the rollerski. Aidan was quick out of the transition, and started the run right away. Mike and I were (considerably) slower and lost about 30 metres on him in the transition. However Aidan was also pretty out of breath from the rollerski and, running with his eyes closed, ended up going off the road a bit once or twice. I'm pretty sure I caught a bit of time on Aidan during the run, but it wasn't significant for sure. However, in the swim my triathlon training from when I was young payed off and I was able overtake Aidan quite quickly. Having the swim at the end of the race probably wasn't the best idea, I don't think I have ever swam that much out of breath, it was difficult to say the least. After Aidan and I finished, there was a pretty epic sprint between Andrew and Mike, Andrew having ran (very) fast to catch up to Mike during the run, and sprinted by him to the finish on the beach.

My dad tried to film the whole thing, but failed. He wasn't actually filming when he thought he was. Our loss.

Throughout the whole week, it rained. Every day. This may sound bad, but it was actually a lot of fun. It kept you cool when you were training, and there is nothing more intense than doing core in a thunderstorm.

Kirstin, Leslie's and Jessica's drowned tent

However it also meant that the area where our tents were ended up being flooded, and many tents ended up being flooded as well. Which sucked for the people in those tents. I kind of lucked out on that front.

Friday we had to do an hour or so of easy jogging, so we went out on some trails. The trails were soaked from the rain which made for a really fun run. On the way out we crossed a really fast moving brook/stream. Further up the trail, we crossed this same stream again. Assuming that the stream would go down to the ottawa river, which we could then take back to OWL, some of us decided to, instead of running back home on the trail, to float down this stream. Those people were Aidan Lennie, Andrew Stewart-Jones, James Taylor, Mike Vieira, my father, Michelle Workun-Hill, Kirstin Besemann, Kaisa Lindfors and myself.

At the beginning the stream was relatively small, about need deep, really dark brown dirty color and really fast moving. Just deep enough that you could let yourself float and drift down it.There were obstacles, trees, branches that cleverly hid in the dark water and tripped you, unseen rocks, and it was so much fun. As we went down, the stream got bigger, deeper, and there were rapids and dams that we could just let ourselves get pulled down. It was pretty much the ultimate water slide. This lasted maybe 20 minutes of intense fun, then the the stream got even bigger, and the current died a bit, and it got so deep you couldn't even touch the bottom.

This is where talk turned from "God this is so much fun" to "where the hell is the Ottawa river, I'm getting hungry". Every turn of this windy stream offered false hope that the river would be around the next bend. Eventually we ran off the stream, and lo and behold, we ran into the backyard of Wilderness Tours, another nearby rafting company. A few men dressed in big raincoats (it was raining) watched us run, soaking wet and dirty, in T-shirts, shorts and running shoes, out of the woods. They looked just a little confused.

From there we ran along the side of the river/swam back to OWL rafting, and our 1 hour short run ended up being a 2 hour run/awesome. Unfortunately I don't have pictures, I don't think a camera would have survived the trip down there anyways. But trust me. It was awesome.

So that's pretty much what OWL camp consisted of. It was a blast, the whole time. I'm going to be taking a little bit of recovery now, to rest up and soak in all the benefits from that camp. Then I think the plan is for another intensity block, which I'll be sure to keep you updated on when it comes up. Bye for now, here's some more photos.