The first time I went on a training camp was before the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. A small gang of us headed down to the south of France, primarily to help acclimatise and get away from any distractions at home, before heading into the cauldron of the Olympic arena.
I can’t say whether this made a difference to how any of us performed. Still, the training camp became a regular feature throughout my years as an elite athlete, especially before the Olympics or World Championships, when the only real plan was to pack in as much training as possible. However, this may not have been done as constructively as it could have.
It wasn’t until 1998 that I first went to a high-altitude camp in Falls Creek, northeast of Melbourne. That was definitely a big help in getting myself back on track that year, and the place became a regular winter retreat for many years after that.
Since leaving that so-called elite world behind me, joining the ranks of “normal” athletes, the likes of which I am now, it’s always been a tricky thing for me to put into perspective the exercise and activity that I do in my daily life – especially when I do it all for the satisfaction, enjoyment and sense of wellbeing involved.
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When I spend a lot of time surrounded by athletes training as part of their livelihood, what I’m trying to do can also seem a bit trivial. This is why I got a whole new perspective on the training camp last week in Praia da Luz, in the Algarve.
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We were all normal athletes, definitely not aiming for any major championship, or trying to compete for Ireland – but still trying to get the best out of ourselves. At times it felt like something that the former elite athlete in me could have learned from.
The camp was organised by Daniel Davey and his team at Verus Performance, and even though none of the others were considered anywhere near elite, I felt in some cases that, with their motivation and drive, they could be dialled in even more than “elite” athletes could.
This wasn’t a training camp as I would have once known it. Encompassing more than just the physical training, it was also about being open-minded to working together and sharing ideas. From my previous experience, training camps had always seemed to be one-dimensional, and not always using the time around training and recovery to look at other ways of improving.
I see it as well every time I show up at a road race, and everyone around me is wearing the latest model of super shoes. I’m still of that generation who run my runners into the ground
What ultimately connected everyone last week was this drive to improve, to chase their own professional dreams. People on this camp came from various backgrounds and different levels of experience. Some competed regularly, others trained simply because they enjoy it, but everyone was there to challenge themselves and learn something new.
It was also interesting to see how many typically elite approaches to training are also now being adopted by normal athletes. It still feels a bit strange to be calling anyone a “normal” athlete without it sounding a little negative, because the distance between normal and elite approaches is often a lot less than people think.
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The conversations around fuelling and recovery really had me tuned in. There is an increasing awareness that improvement is not only built on hard training sessions, but also on the ability to recover. This is a mindset shift that has been taken on board at the elite level for many years and is now an important part of everyday routine for normal athletes.
All this has evolved over time. You see it as well now with a lot more people choosing a summer holiday destination that embraces a positive training environment, whether that’s for running, cycling or swimming.
It does seem to me that, now more than ever, there is less of a divide between elite and normal athletes. The vast majority of runners in a typical 10km or half-marathon are not even members of an athletics club, but they are out there taking on their sport as a lifestyle choice, with a desire for greater knowledge about what they’re doing.
Over the years, many of the factors associated with elite sport, such as structured recovery, performance nutrition, sleep quality, mobility work and mental preparation, have all filtered down into the everyday training environments of normal athletes also.
I know a few runners who are taking part in the Cork City Marathon on Sunday – again, a long way from the elite end of the race. Still, they’re having some of the same conversations as the elite runners, such as when to best get drinks and gels on board. Most of them have also been practising taking on the gels in training, effectively mimicking all the things elite runners do.
Even for first-time marathon runners in Cork on Sunday, they’re all trying to find that extra 1 per cent that might help them on the day. They’ll know all about race pace, and it feels as if all the details of world-class athletes are filtering down to all levels of runners, taken on board with the same intensity.
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I see it as well every time I show up at a road race, and everyone around me is wearing the latest model of super shoes. I’m still of that generation who run my runners into the ground, and they look terrible. But whenever I’m out running with people these days, they’ll nearly always have better runners than I do. To me, it’s always been the purpose of the shoe, more than the look.
I think the normal cyclist has already caught up with the elite rider, in that they have to be on the most expensive bikes, and everything needs to match. But I think running is catching up now, and it’s not as cheap a sport as it used to be.
It also amazes me when I hear some people talking about running cadence, or their heart rate variability, and ask me for some advice. I would only have a rough idea, and certainly not the insight at which many normal athletes are operating these days. It might be that I have some catching up to do.
