I just returned from a quick two-day excursion to the Interlaken, where I host my CT camp.  I dragged Baker up there with me to help me map out some new routes, and Big Rocks also came up Thursday afternoon to review the final plans/ideas for this year’s camp. 

It always amazes me how quickly a year goes by.  Being back up in northwestern CT was great.  It’s such a beautiful area, with great roads and trails to train on.  This will be my fifth CT May camp! 

The weather turned out to be great – sunny and in the high 50’s.  It was very windy, especially on Thursday.  Baker and I met in the front parking lot, and immediately headed over to the Hotchkiss pool to talk with my connection there about the pool hours.  This is the nicest indoor pool I have ever been in.  I guess when tuition is at $30,000 per year for this boarding school, they could afford to put in a pool that is better than most top universities.  

We then set out for a ride that I wanted to test.  This will be one of the rides that will take place during the camp, and after riding it Thursday, I feel it’s probably the best route to date that I’ve come up with at this camp.  It offers everything, and anyone that’s training for IMCDA or IMLP, well; this course is ideal preparation and will instill a lot of confidence.  I won’t go into details, because I like everyone to be surprised, but one thing I will mention is that in four hours, we climbed over 4500 ft.  Baker is coming back from a back injury, so we both took our ipods with us and spent quite a bit of time riding alone.  It went by very quickly however.  Baker is a trooper.  His training over the last few months consisted of infrequent 1 hr easy rides on the CT due to his back.  He’ll jokingly bitch to me about how he still can’t figure out why we’re friends since I make him do this stuff, but I could tell that he loves it.  It’s that whole issue of searching to be satisfied that I have discussed many times in the past.  He went his pace, it was a nice, sunny day, the roads were in great shape, with wide shoulders and hardly any cars, …  Good stuff.

As we rolled back into the Interlaken, Big Rocks arrived.  We showered quick and met with the manager to go over some details.  They just finished upgrading the atrium, where we will do some testing this year, and it’s amazing.  Again, I don’t want to give much away, but this will make testing day a lot more comfortable, while not testing that is.

We had a great dinner, and laughed a bunch as we though t up some more ideas for Baker’s infamous camp video, and then Big Rocks headed out.  The next morning, I wanted to check out some trails close by to see if they would be good for one of the runs.  Baker followed on his mountain bike, as I ran.  These trails started as a dirt access road, that took us onto some single track and then some packed down mulch and hay.  They came out to a huge Lake that we didn’t even know was there.  There are really no roads to it.  What a find! 

We came back and ate a good breakfast of eggs, toast, and lots of coffee, then got back on our bikes to explore another route.  We once again had a great ride.  I felt very strong and solid on both these rides over the two days.  I think that much of that was due to some good computrainer work that I did over the winter, but a lot due to being back up there on these roads that I love and that have become a great, annual adventure.  I mean, Baker road great and put 8 hrs in the saddle over the two days – probably more than he has ridden cumulative in the last month.  Who says that the right attitude can’t produce amazing things?

We left Friday afternoon, a bit tired, yet very excited to get back up there in three weeks and put on the best camp yet.  We left there very satisfied, and VERY motivated.

I look forward to seeing you all in a few weeks!

Cheers,

EH