Fat...I mean SWEAT camp !!

This post has taken a while for me to type as I am so bloody exhausted my brain is not functioning very well. After having a nice night on Friday going to see Cirque du Soleil with great seats and then onto the Captial Cook Hotel for another $7 steak meal, Dean and I started to get really nervous about the 4 day weekend camp coming up. Dean was cursing me for what I was getting him into.

Saturday, October 7, 2006

We had our bags packed and were on the road at 10.00am for Hawks Nest. We got there an hour early so we went for a bit of a drive around to get to know the area and to head to the supermarket to buy our healthy food. We were really worried at this point as we were pretty tired after the drive up with the heat and didnt know how we would handle a couple of hours on the sand dunes in the afternoon. We went to our unit and met the people we would be bunking with for the next few days Keith, Jim, Craig and Mohammed. Amazingly I found out later that Mohammed was actually fasting throughout the entire camp, no food or water during daylight, as he was in ramadan... dedicated stuff.

We met up for the Sandhill sessions at 3.15 pm. Looking around at all the other runners there I started to get even more nervous. They were all really young except for the guys in our unit and were basically a bag of bones wrapped in a little skin. We set off for our 2km warm up to the dunes which Sean called Nanna pace. Dean and I dropped behind straight away as it was more like race pace for me. Before the session started Cindy pulled me aside and told me not to feel like I need to keep up with these guys and to just do what I can. She said that she just got back from the World Mountain running championships and she cant even keep up with the young guns. The sandhill session was a mixture of a circuit that was around 800m up and down dunes. Some reps up a long dune and some reps over on a short really steep dune. At times I couldnt believe how slow I was running. I was doing the circuits in around 4.40-4.50 even having to stop and walk sometimes. I definately found the sand dunes very challenging. My quads were absolutely burning and my heart was pumping even faster than when I'm in a race. When we were doing the really steep hill it took everything I had in me just to keep going up and not go backwards. All the others were really light on their feet and I kept sinking in to almost my knee's !! This was the first time that I have ever done any barefoot running and I really started to feel it in my feet just below my toes and my calves were really starting to tighten up. We finished on the sand dunes at around 5.00 and I was really really happy with myself that I gave the session everything that I had. Dean didnt quite have the endurance to do the whole session but the ones that he did do he was sometimes in the top 3 because he has a lot of power in his legs. On the warm down back to the units I felt really good. Putting my runners back on and running on the grass felt really weird after running on the sand. I felt like I had springs in my shoes !!

A quick shower and we were off to the golf club for dinner. Sean didnt realise there was a foot path that would take us there and he took us on an adventure through the bush and on sand again to get there and everyone was whinging! After today's session Dean was hanging for a beer and felt weird because no-one else was drinking (besides a lot were under age). For dinner I had guiness beef pie and vegies and boy did it taste good. I passed out at 9.00 and slept like a baby.

Sunday, October 8, 2006

I woke up at 6.20 this morning and felt like I had been hit by a truck. I thought there was no way I would be able to do a long run today. I was scheduled for 90 min this morning, at which I would usually do around 15km. Dean told me not to be disappointed if I only manage 14 or so. We all set off in a few cars as the long run was about 10km away on a rolling dirt trail through some farms. Once again Sean told the group to start off at a Nanna pace. I had my garmin on this time and was registering 5.00 min /km at the start and by 200 m they were going off even faster so I decided to drop off from the group straight away. It was funny because Sean said that no-one should drop off before the 6km mark and it took me 300m :) I really struggled with the up hills at first as my quads were really sore from the afternoon dunes. My calves were really really tight and I felt a niggle in my right one as well. It was then that I decided that I would not really worry about the km's I was clocking or the speed that I was going at this camp and I just wanted to focus on showing up for every session and giving them all my best effort even if its slower than usual. I thought this would be a good lesson for me for when I try my first ultra to know what its like to continually have to run on tired legs with doing 3 sessions a day.

By the time we started off it would have been around 7.30 and by this time it was really starting to heat up. There was also not a lot of relief from the sun along the way with only minimal tree coverage. By the 6km mark my legs started to warm up a bit and I started running my normal 6 min / km pace. I remember that once I stopped looking at my garmin and just tuned out I really started to enjoy the run. It was so relaxing being out there in the country until I heard the stampede of the group coming the other way... I'm pretty glad that I was slow as some of the quicker runners come across a snake crawling out on the track. I think I would have freaked if I saw it myself. Coming back to the start point there were some long hills to climb and I had to stop and walk for a bit as I just didnt have it in me to keep running. All up I ran 14.5km in the 90 min and probably also walked another few hundred metres cause I stop my garmin when I need to take walking breaks. The other guys were absolutely flying through the 90 min and covered twenty something kilometres and because Craig is training for New York Marathon in November he had to add a bit extra on and ran back to the units rather than getting a lift back...ha ha

Back at the unit there was a couple of hours to have breaky before we had our strength session. Dean got back just as we did from a long bike ride and he was pretty buggered too.

At 11.30 we went off to the beack for a strength session with lots of medicine balls in tow. People were staring at us as by now a lot of the locals had begun to see us out and about and were wondering what we were doing. The session consisted of a lot of upper body and abs work with a little leg work thrown in. I was regretting bringing Dean along at this point because he thought it was funny to be pegging the medicine ball at my face and throwing the ball to me like a fotty pass spinning it......Dean, I think you were missing the point of the exercises. We finished off the exercises with a Gut busters competition. Gutbusters is where you have to hold your legs in the air while in a seated position and with a medicine ball be continually moving it from side to side touching the ground. One of the girls there kept going for 10 min and holds the record at 17 min. I held on for a minute and a half :)

We were meant to have surf races in the afternoon, but everyone piked out because they were too tired....ohh boo.. Dean and I went to the beach for a bit of a dip anyway. I only went in up to my waist as I had had enough sun for the day and wanted to leave my hat and sunnies on.

After the strength session I really didnt think I had it in me to do another session for the day. I was hoping that Dean would join me so I wouldnt be up the back on my own but he told me to bugger off and he went and bought himself some beer, chips and dip and settled in to finish watching Bathurst. He had enough of the healthy life already. I thought that since I was doing a short run (the first in a long while) that I would give my orthodics a test drive. At around 4pm we headed out for our 30 min recovery run through a local trail, by which time some cloud coverage had come over and some very strong winds. Once again I had lost the group within around 500m and they were nowhere in sight. My calves were super tight at this point but I was finding that after running for a bit they were starting to feel better. It was really relaxing being out there on the trail, I wasnt caring what pace I was doing. I was fairly sheltered from the winds on the trail and it started to shower lightly which was a welcome relief to the morning's 30 odd degree heat. I got to an intersection on the trail where I had 4 choices of where to go. I am absolutely hopeless with directions, I thought the group might have been coming along the beach but decided to just turn around and head back to the start anyway. By the time I got back the lead of the group was getting back and I had been out for 30 min anyway covering around 4.8 or 4.9km (might as well make it 5). For the last km my orthodics were really starting to rub and gave me a blister on my arch so I will need to get that checked out. A couple of the guys, Jim and Keith, were worried that I would get lost and done a bit extra to go and look for me but didnt see any footprints in any of the other directions. As per after every session I spent a good 15-20 min stretching. Some of the young ones were just heading straight back to the unit without doing any stretching at all. No such luck for the oldies...

Sean had arranged for us to have dinner at a restaurant just down the road which is normally closed but they opened for our group and put on a few pizzas and pasta's. It was amazing that with all the training I was doing I wasnt really feeling that hungry, my stomach was usually queezy from the hard workouts. We went back to the unit early and watched some of "Super size me" but didnt last long and we all ventured to bed.

Monday, October 9, 2006

I woke up this morning at 6.40 feeling like I had been run over by a truck that then reversed over me. I wore my skins to bed last night, but lets face it, they aint miracle workers. My calves were so tight I could barely walk around and the niggle in my right calf was getting worse. I had trouble walking down stairs and was also having trouble just concentrating so I told the guys to go on without me and that I would follow later as we were only on a recovery run this morning. I actually only left a couple of minutes after them but I just needed a little extra time to loosen up my body and I knew that I wouldnt be able to stick with the group anyway. I set off just after 7am on the same trail as yesterday evening. After a while I was actually feeling pretty good so I decided to turn left when I got to all those intersections as Sean told me this will lead to a road. I followed the trail all the way to the road and then turned around and went back. I met some of the guys at the intersection, boy did they not look like they were doing a recovery run. Every run is competitive for them. A quick hello, goodbye and they were flying again. I got back just and had done 6km in just over 40 min. A lot lot slower than I normally do, but I really was treating these runs as recovery runs, unlike the others.

We found out that the beach was closed due to there being high tide so our strength session was at the footy oval today. As I am a woos I didnt go barefoot because of the bindies and had to do my warm up in thongs. The session went forever and Sean was giving us a continual count down, 58 min to go, 54 min to go.... Our abs, butt, and upper body got absolutely caned today. I have to say that I have never been so aware of my abs and obliques before. After the session we headed back to the units for lunch. Dean and I went for a little drive in our free time but where too buggered to do anything too extravegant. We did manage to find some other dunes around 15km away that were absolutely massive. When you were on the top you could see out to the whole of the national park. We made sure that we didnt tell Sean until the next day ;)

Dean joined in on the afternoon session of sand repeats. We done a slow warm up for around 2km on the beach to get to where we would start the session and were responsible for doing the strides ourselves like the rest of the camp. The first rep I had was a 1km and luckily it was with the wind. Kept it under 5 min which I was happy with considering I was buggered. I then jogged around for a bit while the others went back for another 1km rep. I chose to do the rest of the session on my own as I couldnt keep up with what the others were doing and I done another 600m rep into the wind, a 200m rep (racing Dean and he won) and 3 other 200m reps and I was done. When we had finished the session I found out that Dean had gone off chasing a police car that had gone flying down the beach to the rocks. The group was leaving and went off for their warm down run to the units and I set off to collect Dean. When I got there the police and ambo's were looking for some extra hands as a lady had tried to commit suicide by overdosing on pills and was near the edge of the rocks. She was quite large so they couldnt lift her out themselves. By the time I got there they had decided to get a helicopter to get her out. Because of our little adventure it was around a 3km warm down for us. We got back just in time to have a quick shower and head off with the group down to the golf club for dinner. As we only had one more session left I decided that tonight I would have a beer with Dean and had the roast tonight. Got to bed early.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

I woke up this morning at 6.30 am feeling like I had been run over by a train and backed over repeatedly. My body was sunk right into the bed as I just had no energy at all. We met up at the usual 7am and we walked to the beach to do our warm up run there. I was so tight and tired that I couldnt even manage to run in the warm up and just walked to the dunes. Doing the strides even hurt as I couldnt even manage to lift my knees up. We had all the circuits up at the beginning rather than split out like Saturday. I only managed one hard one and I was done. I just kept moving my legs while some of the others done up to 4 circuits. I then done 2 reps of the long dune and decided that that was enough for me. While the others were doing the steep dunes and other drills, I amused myself with doing another circuit and other things just concentrating on moving forward. I had started to get a niggle on my leg just above my left ankle. A warm down was just another walk for me and everyone jumped in the water fully clothed at the end.

Once back at the unit it was fun basically trying to eat everything that would spoil on the trip home. Packing and cleaning up was a bit of a pain because it meant continuous trips up and down the stairs. On the way back Dean and I drove through the Hunter Valley and stopped in at the Chocolate Factory (didnt buy much) and some of our favourite wineries, including McLeashes Estate. We were home by 5pm and ordered in pasta as we were too buggered to cook anything ourselves.

All up I had an absolute ball at the camp and I will definately be trying to make it to more of them. It would be good to have more people that are around my level as somtimes I felt a tad guilty, but I always told Sean not to let me hold up the group and was happy to do my own thing. It was great to get away for the weekend and run through some new places and to hang out with people that are obsessed with running as much as I am :) Value for money the camp gets 10/10 from me.