Training Camp Recovery Calculator

Alan Couzens, MS (Sports Science)

Training camps can be a risky proposition, there's no doubting that. In Gordo & Joe's classic "Going Long", he goes so far as to say that this sort of 'crash training'
while appealing for most, is appropriate for few. I can't disagree with this but, in spite of the risk, year after year, we see those who are able to effectively manage the risk of a camp go on to have a breakthrough season. There are good reasons for this, as I outline in this EC article.. Providing the athlete can pull it off (without getting sick or injured or burnt out), the training density that a training camp offers makes it an incredibly effective strategy for both...

• Bumping fitness to a higher level prior to the 'serious' (specific) training of the season
• 'Peaking' fitness to the highest possible level prior to a race

In fact, due to it's effectiveness in accomplishing these objectives, it's rapidly becoming almost a necessity in the preparation of serious athletes.
Training camps have long been a staple at the elite level, but, they are now rapidly making their way into the age-group ranks. In fact, I'm hard pressed to come up
with a recent Kona Qualifier that I've coached who hasn't made use of one or more training camps in his qualifying build.

Yet, this is not to discount the risk of increasing your regular training volume by that much. People get sick. People get injured. And, to extend
the metaphor of the EC article, sometimes a training camp can definitely 'backfire'.

I most typically see a 'backfire' when an athlete:

1. Goes into the camp without a clear sense of what he/she is trying to accomplish in terms of training load for the week
2. Fails to heed the signs that recovery is needed during the week
3. Feels like Superman following the camp and returns to heavy training WAY TOO SOON!

The calculator below is a really simple tool that is designed to help you avoid the 3rd cause of the proverbial 'backfire' outlined above...

CAMP WEEK	Recovery Week	Return to loading
Volume:	Volume:	Volume:

To use, simply dial up the load of the first slider to the relative load of your training camp compared to your standard loading week going in.
In other words, if your normal loading weeks were 12 hours going in and you did 24 hours for your camp week, this would represent 200%. As an aside,
I don't recommend increases of more than 200% for a camp week as they greatly increase the risk of 'backfire'. As you slide the first slider up, you'll
notice that the second goes down. This represents the recommended load in your recovery week as a % of that 'baseline load'. So, if you're a 20hr per week
athlete and you do a 30hr training camp (150%), for the recovery week, I'd recommend approx. 10hrs (50% of your baseline load). You'll see that week 3 is
permanently fixed to a return to baseline load. The ability to do this is a crucial factor in assessing the success of a training camp. Set up your recovery
with this key objective in mind!

This strategy can be surprisingly challenging to pull off. You'd think that at the end of a huge week, athletes are ready for rest but, based on my experience
often the fatigue takes a few days to arrive and, in some situations it can take a little bit of active facilitation to calm the system down (decrease the
stress hormones and the general sympathetic response) after several days of 'battle'. It's this combination of wanting to stay 'up' coupled with the fitness
bump that the athlete gets from camp that often gets athletes into trouble. Put more bluntly, ignore the calculator at your own risk :-)

In conclusion, training camps can be an incredibly effective (almost necessary) strategy for the serious long course athlete. Keep in mind though that
getting a good training response is a function of both the training that you get done and the speed at which you're able to absorb it. The more extreme
the training load, the more extreme you need to be with the measures you take to absorb that load.

Train smart,

AC