Welcome back!

Welcome back.

Looking at the Eiger and think!

I know it has been a long time since I wrote a blog or made a podcast. For this I am sorry. There are lots of reasons and to put it simply life, study, clients, running and other pressures got in the way. I am trying to do better. In fact, I am about to start Summer school (well, it's winter school for me) and a requirement is to post at least one blog a week! So that will be interesting.

My big goal over this last summer here in Germanland was to qualify for UTMB (Ultra Trail Mont Blanc) which is a big deal. To enter you have to have 8 points in a year, in 3 qualifying races. This means that I ran 3 big races, as follows:   

Trail de La Vallee des Lacs (France), 85km 4500 vertical. (3 Points)

Eiger Ultra Trail (Switzerland), 101km 6700 vertical. (my Garmin said 6970 vertical) (3 Points)

Les Trails du Haut-Koenigsbourg (France), 84km 3284 veritcal. (2 Points)

I will do a bit of a race breakdown in later blogs.

These were 3 awesome races and I really enjoyed them. They were hard and long, yet I loved it. It is weird now not having races really planned for next year. I have to start looking, yet it is hard to plan on what to do when I hope to get my name drawn in the UTMB lottery.

This is during the Eiger ultra. Top of 1500 vert climb! Hard

I am also waiting to find out if I can work in Switzerland. I have a job offer from there and the endless waiting for the red tape to be cleared is driving me nuts. When everything is confirmed I will be telling everyone what it is.  I have to say it is exciting for me and will be a big challenge, yet a really positive one.

So all in all I am waiting to find out what is happening with a lot of things for next year. Still that is nice to have stuff to look forward to, and wondering what new opportunities will eventuate over the next weeks and months.

Also this year I went from part time Uni student to full time. As anyone that has studied knows this is a massive work load. Still it is really positive for me and I have learnt a lot that will make me a better coach with greater understanding of the body,  what it does and why. And there is so much more to learn.

I am also really lucky to be working with great clients! It makes my job harder and easier. Harder because I want to do everything I can to help them succeed and easier because when I ask them to do something I know it will be done. And here I have to mention an athlete of mine, Richard, who won his age group at the Lake Hood Sprint Triathlon! Awesome work Richard! And also Arnd who I coach for swimming - he was first out the water in his age group at Ironman Switzerland.

I am planning on making a podcast tomorrow focused on Altitude training. It is mainly from a recent university assignment. I found it really interesting researching the assignment and learnt so much from it. So I will go though it for you and give you all a clearer idea about the pros and cons of altitude training.

Questions?

Till soon,

Coach Cam.