The similarities are endless between Macho Man Randy Savage and Watty.
This is what happened the last time Watty ran his mouth before camp. The photo that I'm not showing is the one of me melting down at the top of this same climb....
Watty hosts the toughest training camp in the NC mountains each April that I commited to helping him with before I decided to hang up my triathlon shoes. The camp is very demanding so it's not something that I can go into untrained without getting dropped and left for dead. There are going to be some strong cyclists up there so I've got 8 weeks to work myself into shape. I'm currently not in any kind of aerobic shape and I've only ridden the bike (mountain bike) three times since racing Clearwater 70.3 in November. Watty and I have been bantering back and forth about who was going to lay the wood to who. He left me a voicemail this morning taunting me in a Macho Man Randy Savage (ex-pro wrestler) voice. The end result from all of the trash talk was that we're going to see who makes it to the top of three selected climbs during the weekend but we're taking vastly different approaches to our training. I will be limiting my training to under 100 miles per week on the bike and Steve will be riding between 300-400+ miles per week over the next 8 weeks. It will be fun and interesting to see the two training styles collide in the mountains. Of course this is all in good fun but it's something that will force me to get into some kind of aerobic shape to stay fit and healthy. Along with that, I don't like to lose, so it's a good challenge for me. Here's my plan for the next 8 weeks:
* 3 cycling sessions per week consisting of:
* Two hour long interval & LT workouts in our basement
* One Saturday mountain bike ride building from 1.5 hrs to 3 hrs
* 5-6 short run sessions building to 40 miles per week
* Three 30 min strength sessions
* Drop about 5 lbs of unnecessary body fat
The training days at the camp will be long for Steve and me since we'll be taking the long course each day. He's got each course broken down with optional bailout routes that can make them shorter if need be. The long routes are 103 miles with ~13k ft of climbing on day 1 followed by 102 miles with ~18.5k ft of climbing on day two and we'll finish off with a ride out and back on the parkway on day 3. The toughest day will be day two. We'll be riding "the loop of truth" which was a course hand picked by Steve and me a year or so ago in our attempt to come up with the toughest course we could find in the Blowing Rock area. I think we've succeeded.
My only concern for camp will be my body's ability to utilize fat as the primary fuel source. Since most of my training will be high octane and I will have no foundation laid down I'll be interested to see if I'll be blowing through my carb stores faster than usual. If that's the case, I'll be stocking up on Mountain Dew at the gas station stops!!
There are still a couple of spots available for camp so here's the link for info if anyone is interested in joining the group.
Camp Details Here