An Epic of a Week

This week I am completing a training camp around the French Alps with Scott Molina and John Newsom's "Epic Camp". Epic Camp was devised in NZ as competitive overload weeks where each day you swim, run and ride doing very long days with some hard competitive testing with other strong athletes en route. They are held in different places around the world, and this year the Epic team was headed to the French Alps. I decided it could be a good experience to join them, learn from the experience itself, from Scott, John and the other athletes and hopefully help a little on the way with some local knowledge, especially when the group heads north to the Annecy area where my family and I currently live.

It is an interesting experience for me as I have never done a week like it before in many ways; daily volume, camp group environment or multi stage tour. Clearly lots to learn.

Turning up I had some comfort in that I am mid season, so although a bit fatigued from lots of racing, I'm as fit as I've been and also have plenty of experience climbing the French cols after a season where my training is tailored around hilly races (IM Nice, Alpe D'Huez and Challenge Henley). It helps when you live in an area where even getting from our village to the house involves a 10-15% grade hill! On the counter side, I was the only female in the group, likely one of the oldest, in a possy full of very strong amateur and current and ex pro athletes.

Anyway, here was the plan for the week

In case you look at that and think...are you mad? Don't worry I asked myself the same as I looked at the program. It is an experiment for me to push a bit further and see what is possible. It is also a great opportunity to ride some of the classic cols and see some of the towns of the Alps that I have not yet visited with a group of other athletes. Also I am doing it to enhance my capability as an athlete, so it will be a bit of a test of how my body responds to a really big overload week a month out from my next big race.

So you could say I was nervous. Probably more honestly I would say I was scared. Would I be able to keep up? Would my body respond well, getting stronger through the week or just deteriorate slowly until exhaustion overcame me? Only one way to deal with that; "run the other way" I hear you say... well yes that is possible too and I did consider that. No, I felt ready for a big challenge and so chose to just get into it, biting off one day at a time and hopefully being smart enough to push hard when it was good for my overall program and hold back saving energy and preventing any injury when I needed to irrespective of the competitions being waged around the group.

So, here goes. Off to Lyon. Wish me luck! I'll fill you in soon on how I go.

A bientot 
Christine