Tampa Team Training Camp

The advantage of a delayed write up is that my memory gets fuzzy and leaves out much of the mundane details I otherwise would include. Ha! What a sorry excuse.

My team, Asphalt Beach, had our first team training camp in Tampa after the Squiggy racing weekend. By all accounts, it was a huge success. It kicked off my outdoor season with some much needed mileage. I verified my current fitness after a winter of tough training. I learned to skate with my teammates, finding out each other's skating style. Plus what could be better to build commeraderie than to "suffer" together for a few days?

LW put together our program with a mix of off-skates, plyos, rolling drills, paceline work, strategic exercises, intervals, and hill training thrown in for good measure. These are all various drills I do on regular basis between my own training and TISC practices. It was a good refresher for sure. What interested me was that I got to see myself doing those drills from plenty of photos and videos taken during the training camp. Shall we begin?

All photos and videos are courtesy of ldskater.

Monday morning off-skate. Holding a 90s squat in this photo. LW called me out for putting elbows on thighs so I stopped doing that soon after this photo was taken.  

Plenty more photos and video after the jump.

Monday morning off-skate. We were doing cross under. Basically it was like the crossbacks we do at plyos but at a controlled pace without jumping.

Monday morning off-skate. Possibly doing one-leg squat in this photo. Reminded me of doing one-leg squat on an inverted Bosu ball at the gym except I was on solid ground!

Monday morning off-skate. Plyos crossbacks with emphasis on covering distance side to side. It was not among my favourites but it was something that my body is accustomed to.

Monday morning rolling drill. Holding hypoglide position with pushing leg off the ground. I felt quite secure and there was noticeably more strength than last season. I was thankful that our coaches at TISC make us do these technique drills on a regular basis. My knee and ankle bend looked decent.

Morning morning rolling drill. This is another hypoglide picture. This time gliding on left leg. Notice that my leg alignment was wonky.

Monday morning rolling drill. Glide in recovery position. Slacker! I cheated by resting my back wheel on the ground.

Monday morning rolling drill. Glide in jab position.

Monday afternoon off-skate. Maintain squat position and pass ball either from above the head or under the legs. Last person moved up until each person was at the front three times. I just moved up to the front in this picture hence the deep knee bend. Yay for looking good for the camera.

See? A few seconds later my legs were tired and I started shifting my weight.

Monday afternoon off-skate plyos. Basically we did gunthers, low walk + tuck jumps at cones, frog jumps up and down the three lanes. I was either just about to take off or land my tuck jump in this photo from a low walk position.

This picture will be my claim to fame, I swear. I was in the middle of my tuck jump. Part of it was really the height of my jump but I suspect part of it was optical illusion. The lack of point of reference on the ground made the jump looked that much more impressive.

Monday afternoon off-skate. Side to side jump maintaining compact skating position. That was the only off-skate drill that really felt hard. I closed my eyes (unflattering photo alert!) and was totally anti-social in between sets to ensure my heartrate came down efficiently.

Tuesday morning. We did some pack skating with 30s lead before dropping back. This is a typical look of me skating in a pack in terms of drafting distance and knee bend. I wasn't skating for the camera.

A continuation of the last photo with me leading this time. Sigh, my awkward left foot recovery is in full display. For some reasons, my left toe points out rather involuntarily.

Tuesday afternoon off-skate. We were holding this position before falling/pushing. I'm happy with my alignment in this picture.

Tuesday afternoon rolling drills. We were doing one-leg slalom hence the awkward body position. This is one of my favourite warm up drills to get a good feel of my edges.

A special workshop by NCJ showing us how to do self-massages for skating-related muscle maintenance. Don't forget to check out her column at Inline Planet!

It's not all work and no play at the Asphalt Beach training camp. Hanging out for pizza and trivia games were other ways for some team bonding.

There'll be plenty of asphalt kickin' this season. This photo was taken during our Wednesday morning rolling hill skate. The pavement was wet and we got rained on a tiny bit but it was my favourite day for sure. I felt strong even though we were well into the last day of the camp.

It was so awesomely cool to see us bombing down the trail in identical skinsuits, a blur of red, black, and white. Since my epiphany on hill climbing technique last fall during NYC100k climbing behind NCJ, I've been learning to climb differently. During this training session, I got to climb behind experienced A2A skaters such as BC, JW, BO, and LW. It was reassuring to know that I am on the right path, technique-wise. These guys and gals got me thinking of attempting A2A...someday, perhaps.

I present you the pro women of Team Asphalt Beach 2010. Since we all base out of different cities, it was incredibly useful learning to skate with each other during the camp. We had a chance to practice executing team strategies and finding out each other's skate quirks.

And here is a picture to help you recognize us in a pack.

When all was said and done, it was time to wipe down my skates. There are talks of running a team training camp again this time next year. Sign me up!

If you still haven't had enough, check out this fun video of our training camp highlights. Warning: I showed off my vocal chops in the most Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious way. Turn up the volume at your own risk.