Epic Camp - The Full Monty
Last week I escaped the world of work for a bit and went on Epic Camp with some buddies and a group of other triathletes from around New Zealand and beyond. Epic Camp is a kind of triathlon ‘holiday’ run by coach John Newsom of the popular IM talk podcast.
Some triathlon friends have done these Spring camps for the last couple of years and I've been an avid follower of their adventures and wondering if I could do it myself. This year I figured I'd give it a whirl for a winter training goal and see what I was capable of.
The group swam, biked and ran around the most scenic parts of the top of the South Island. A typical day involved around a 2km open water swim, 100km+ of hilly road riding and 10k of trail running. I didn't really fit the mould of the typical person on camp, I'm tiny compared everyone else, not normally a long distance triathlete (I prefer sprint distance), and wasn't training for Ironman New Zealand like everyone else - just the camp!
I'd put in a decent amount of training over winter but backed off the last few weeks before the camp to freshen up. I was a bit nervous going in after a few mentally demanding months in my new role and wondered if I might have some dark, existential 'I can't go on moments' and what would happen.
What I found was the fitness was there, I had no trouble completing the camp activities and I was much stronger mentally than I thought I was. No dark moments, I just kept going and felt more energised as the camp went on.
I was interviewed for the podcast with a couple of times which was awesome as I'm huge fan of the show. Below are links to an interview mid-way through the camp and at the end. Bevan Eyles is a co-host and was in the second interview also. This was really cool as I'm a fan of his stuff and he's always interested in the psychology perspective on approaching physical challenges. (Bevan is an ex pro Ironman triathlete and famous in the world of Les Mills fitness as a Body Attack instructor - he also has his own podcast on fitness behaviour and psychology-related topics).
In both interviews we discussed some mental strategies for tackling some of the more challenging times on camp. One day in particular the group needed to ride over 100km uphill into a roaring headwind to get from one town to another and I talked about chunking it down into bite size pieces.
Here's the camp interview from halfway through the trip …
...and the post camp interview.
So to wrap up, if you're thinking about doing something like this near your perceived limits, I think just give it a go as an experiement if you can - turns out we're stronger than we think we are and finding out can be a heap of fun!
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