Triathlon Training Camp 2011 - Part 1

I arrived at Geneva airport and anxiously awaited the arrival of my enormous, gaffa-taped bike box (which I had been generously leant by My Dan Brunton, thank you very much!). The brilliantly efficient Swiss came through without fail and I had what was by far the quickest airport transition of my life.

I littered Jon with questions as he drove me very patiently back to the chalets: How big is the lake? When’s our first mega alpine cycle climb? How many sessions a day are we doing? Am I ridiculously unfit compared to the others? And then most importantly: How many times  a day do we get fed?

The box in all it's gaffa-taped glory

When we arrived I was in awe; our chalets were literally spitting distance from the fabulously clear and enticing lake. The whole area sits in a little valley with a spectacular panorama of alpine peaks, including the monstrous white summit of Mont Blanc.

My two chalet-mates - Marie and Kasia - were on-hand immediately to help me put the bike together and amazingly we did it first time... such pros!

We kicked off the day with a swim in the lake before breakfast. It was warm compared to the UK, so warm in fact that a mysterious mist engulfed it for the first few hours of the day until the sun rose over the mountains.  It was absolutely glorious.

After breakfast we had a running technique session which culminated in some super high cadence leg work on a couple of laps of the lake and a good dose of sweating.

All the kit lined up ready for transition practise

Transition training came next. I had wondered how much a person can really be educated on changing shoes and organising your kit on race day. There’s much more to it that that though and the answer is: a lot! I learnt (along with pretty much everyone else) in this session that my bike handling skills are absolutely atrocious when it comes to mounting and dismounting. This showed massively in our post lunch cycle/run brick session where I very nearly came a-cropper as I overenthusiastically leapt off my bike, caught my foot on the top tube and hopped around frantically trying to stay upright. Some skills to be worked on there...

A core strength session finished up the day with some dazzling displays of swiss-ball balancing.

All in all a great first day of training; a fantastic first alpine climb on the bike (followed by an exhilarating first descent), a whole new appreciation of good transitions and a massive amount of carbs consumed.