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Mallorca Speedcamp 2006 with Barry Publow
by Michael GarvinThis May I had a chance to take some of my vacation time at one of Barry's week long Speedcamp sessions. This one was held in Mallorca, Spain (pronounced My-Orca). The weather was good, lots of skating was done, and we got a lot of personal attention from Barry. Everyone improved their skating as a result of this Speedcamp. The group was friendly mix of people from many countries around the world, amoung the countries represented, Canada, Germany, US, Sweeden, Austria, Czech Republic, and the Netherlands. By the end of the camp we were all looking forward to getting a chance to skate together again.
I've compiled my daily blog of the camp below (day by day), and you can see my photo Journal, by looking in the Mallorca 2006 album on our club website. Since I was taking the pictures I'm not in any of mine, but I've included a few pictures that Erik took (another skater at the camp), that have me in them. Erik's full gallery can be found here.
Skate Camp Day 0: No Sleep Til Brooklyn
Things have started off smoothly for the Skate Camp with Barry Publow. All flights were on time except the last one, and teh delay was only 25 minutes, so not too big a deal. The kid kicking my seat was annoying but not entirely unexpected (I flew ecconomy). Did´t get much chance to sleep, lots of noise and having to get to connections etc. From my front door to the door of the hotel it was 22 hours and basically an all nighter.
When arrived I saw other skaters outside the hotel, there were in fact with the camp, so I dumped my gear in my room and then we went out for a nice 18Km skate. We explored around Alcudia North and found sound good back streets for working on technique with very little traffic. I think skating right away realy helped my body overcome the all nighter and get into the new time zone. Its about 6 hours ahead (in the next day) here. I sleep realy well if not for as long as I would have liked! :(
The main adventure so far on skates was getting chased by a little weiner dog, I swear not much bigger than both my hands put together but that little thing can move!! I went front of me, we didn´t colide, but then it circled and started chasing from behind. I had to do a little acceleration attach, just to get away from it! I think smaller dogs are more aggressive! ;)
Mallorca (My-York-Ah) is beautiful, the ocean and moutains together with lots of country side. The drivers are also very, very patient with us skaters. Very few problems so far. The only issue (for me) is that once we hit Europe I couldn´t find cereal and milk at all. Apparently they don´t have cows! At least not in the proportion we do in North America. The hotel breakfast had cereal, but it was homegenized milk and it tasted like I was eating cream! At least I got my cereal though!
Settling in isn´t too hard, most people here know enough english that you can´t get where/what you need. There is also a grocery store about 200m down the street so we can get food and laundry soap for our aptartments. The hotel gave us room that are furnished with microwave, small stove, small fridge and pots/pans etc. So we can whip up our meals even if we like. The main thing was everyone was buy loads of water, the tap water is really aweful. :( It was fun watching the water train of skaters carrying big water jugs back to the hotel :)
Lots of cyclists here, I guess its a favored spot for them train. We are in the east part of Alcudia which is kind of the family resort focused part of Mallorca. The west side of the island by Palma (near the airport) is much more cosmo, with the night clubs and everything.
Tomorrow should be good, I swapped my bearings around and put some 84mm Red Mundo´s on. We´re doing a skate in the morning with Barry and he said we´ll explore around to look for roads with new pavement. Should be good! :) Tomorrow will also be the official first day of the camp. I´m pretty stoked to get going :)
(^_^)/
mike.
Skate Camp Day 1: Like a Blister in The Sun
Slept in a bit today to catch up on my sleep. Didn´t get a morning workout/skate in because of that, but I got plenty of mileage later in the day so it all worked out. I did make it downstairs for breakfast though around 8:30. Our training usually starts at 10 so its goos to get breakfast around 8 so it has time to digest a bit before we hit the skates.
Today we did our first group skate in the morning. We explored east, away from the ocean and towards the mountains. We found some newly paved country roads, and they are absolutely perfect for skating, especially when the wind is behind you! It was a social skate so nothing to fast, but near the end one guy made a break for and I was first one to catch him. Woot! He was double pushing and I caught him skating classic and sprinting. It was a good little workout :) After that I lost the fast pack for the last 3Km back to the hotel, once I was out of the draft I got baked pretty quick. :(
The afternoon sessions start at 4 so we have time for lunch and a little relaxation. Apparently it a vacation as well ;) Our morning skate finished close to 1 so I took a walk and found a sandwitch bar and did a little shopping for stuff like laundry soap. In this part of the island there is one main street called Anta that runs up along the north east coast between the port vilages and cities. Our hotel the Ivory Play is right on that road. So if you just start walking you will get to other hotels and all the little stores, bars and cafes in between. This part of the island is very family oriented though, its mostly little stores where you can buy swimming toys and soveneirs. The other end of the island (the west side) is where it gets much more modern and night clubbish.
Before the session at 4 I got out on my skates to work on cross-overs and double push technique. I couldn´t do a lot on my left side because my ankle was really raw from the morning skate, but I did figure out how to double push! Wuhoo! Basically the problem has been that with my longer skates (the 5x88 frames), doing the underpush carve is really, really hard. But if I lift the ball of my foot and release the presure on the front, I can actually carve really well. So, I think thats the trick to being able to overcome the excessive amount of power needed to get the underpush carve. As weell I can feed it with more gravity (falling). So I´m pretty happy, I think I´m making progress. :)
To top it off I got to play with the little dog again, I did some laps around the hotel and found the corner where the dog lives. Everytime I came by, he would run out and try to catch me. I think it was just that the noise got him excited. When I stopped and held out my hand so he could check me out, he couldn´t get away fast enough! He was still barking but now he was trying to get home. The owners home has a little fence around it and after chasing me he had to jump over the fence to get into the yard. It was fun just watching him take a few practice jumps and finally getting over the fence. For a little dog, hes fast, loud and a great jumper! :)
Our session at 4 was standard clssic technique, it went well, I´ve been through it several times before though, so nothing much new. We did a group skate after off to the west country roads again. This time on the way back I got lost after being dropped from the fast pack. I stayed with them using classic to the turn around point (15-16Km), and then on the way back I kept with them for about half the way and then my blister pain was too much and I cracked.
After that I just didn´t have the mental energy to push the sprint and stay with them. After they went ahead I lost them on a sharp turn and turned off the wrong way and got lost. I followed the signs though to Port Alucida wich is about 5Km north of where our hotel is.
It was actually cool, I got to see downtown Alcudia with its old fortrass wall and the remains of a open roman theater. I also got to do some city skating, always fun :) I hit the marina and then figured it was a good time to ask for directions and got tips on how to back to Anta (the big road along the beasch hotels). After doubling back that way I was able to get to the start of Anta, and then just skate straight along there to the hotel.
My left ankle was pretty mangled from the skate though. The 2nd Skin Blister pad was melted off and I had some more ¨flaps of skin¨ action going on :( Still though it was good to see a little more of the island and get my bearings by eperience rather than just from a map. Both morning and evening skates gave my about 63Km I think, the morning one was 28, and the evening one with my ¨bonus¨ ride was about 35Km.
All in all a good day, but I´m going to be nursing my left ankle for the rest of the trip. I´m happy though, I know now how to get my underpush carving going for double push, and its just a matter of time now.
The morning session starts in about 20mins, so I´ll sign off here. We´re doing video analysis in the morning and then a group skate in the evening.
(^_^)/
mike.
Skate Camp Day 2: The Skater that Barry Built
The mornings are getting better now. I can manage to get up at 7 and am now aiming for 6 so that I can get out to the beach and catch the sun-rise on the ocean. Also being a little more choosy at breakfast, trying to avoid the more artery busting type foods. They do like fry their food here! Breakfast is usually good for catching up with the other skaters as well, people usually roll in around 8:30. There are 18 skaters which is a good number for a single week camp, but Barry had to condense the two week camp into 1 week because there wasn´t enough people. Usually the first week is for intermediate skaters and the second week is for advanced skaters.
We met at 10 for our morning skate and decided to do a little exploring in the other direction. We headed south along Anta and the inland towards Muro. We didn´t go all the way, we did a triangle path back to our hotel, but did get in 27Km. It was a great skate, I skated with different packs and got lots of pictures of the scenery and the packs doing their thing. I even got some shots of our fearless leader (Barry!)
The skate was fairly punishing on my left ankle blister. I kind of found positioning to get the presure off my ankle but I started developing a blister beside it about a centimeter over. I´m worried it will take me out of action before the end of the week, I don´t want to miss any skating. :( I´m going to talk to one of the other skaters this morning and see if I netgotiate for some extra blister pads or Mole skin.
Also, before the skate we did a quick video taping of everyone skating (one by one) on a 250m stretch. This allowed Barry to get a good front view of the skating technique that cold be analyzed bit by bit on video later.
Lunch was relaxing, met with the guys from Sweeden by pool bar for pizza. Their pizza at the hotel are flat bread with a few toppings. It tastes ok, but they are supper heavy on the oil. There was a little puddle of orange oil on the plate when I was done. Yum! ;)
The big event of the day though was the 4PM technique skate. Barry split us into groups and sent 2 groups out skating while the 3rd stayed back. While the other groups were out skating he gave 1 on 1 technique instruction to the group tha stayed back. I got into the fast group, but it wasn´t too bad a skate, Mica (our fasted skater, a girl from Germany), wasn´t hammering too hard so we just had a good cruise.
When we got back after a little 13K warmup, we got our 1 on 1 time with Barry. Mine went really well, Barry gave me a couple of key pointers on resolving the root cause of a number of issues. I tried making the adjustments, and right away I feel more even power on both sides of my stride, a straigher line of travel and better timing in my recovering and push. For me the main improvements are to get my knees closer together and set down my foot wider afterwords, more directly under my hip.
After that session we regrouped at the hotel and did the video analysis. The issues that Barry was talking about when he gave us the 1 on 1 instruction became very clear in the video. Seeing yourself skate is both humbling and instructive at the same time :) When I get home I´m going to get a camcorder so I can get more video of my skating and use it as feedback.
It was a really good training day, not a big day for getting distance, but the feedback from Barry and the video analysis was really helpful for getting me to my max speed. I already feel faster and more consistent :) The distance for today was 40Km, which is still pretty good. We have a long distance skate comming up on thursday, it should be a good 60Km skate. My big worry will be trying to get my blisters to start healing up a bit before that skate. Also, tomorrow (wednesday) we get a day off to go do the tourist thing. I´m planning to go with a couple of people to Palma because they have a bike path right along the ocean. It would be really good to do a skate along there and get some shots of the sea and skating along the sea side.
Time for some breakfast, I need to go get some skate fuel :)
(^_^)/
mike
Skate Camp Day 3: Feel the Burn
A solid day of training! At this point we´ve been skating for 3 days, with technique sessions and touring. Logging lots of distance each day and improving our classic technique along the way. The legs are getting a little sore, but its ok because tomorrow we get the day off, woot!
The morning skate was really hard for me, the presure on my blisters continues and they didn´t get much worse, but they didn´t get better either :( At the same time it slows me down a lot because I can´t go full power on my left side :( On the upside we took the coastal road on the way back and we got to skate by the seaside. It was really nice, but we had to skate on the bike path going the wrong way. So all the German cycles were getting cheesed at us. We made it back alive though, so its all good. :) The Germans are here in a big way. This is basically a German settlement and most of the tourists are Germans. I guess they have more vacation time then we do. I heard the Seedish guys saying that in some European countries 6 weeks of vacation comes standard to new hires. Those guys have it good!
Fortunately after the morning session I was able to get some little felt rings from one of the girls who brought a huge bag of medical supplies with her. I guess the rings are for corns on your feet, but they are also big enough that you can use them around the raw/blistered skin to get the presure to at least not be directly on the raw skin. The afternoon skate went much better for me. Very little pain and I was able to cruise at nearly full power. At the end of the afternoon skate I was beat though, my legs were completely exausted.
The faster guys weren´t hammering at 110% but they were working it for sure. Even though my legs wanted to stop, I kept pushing hoping I would be able to keep the pace a little longer. Barry said that at the upper end the difference between the top skaters and the next to top skaters is just the tolerance for pain. I guess I was training on that part of skating ;)
The afternoon skate also started out with a technique session, we worked on balance drils which are suprisingly difficult and suprisingly hard on your leg mucles. We did stuff like taking off one skate and balancing on the remaining skate, also paddle skating with the one skate (pushing with your bare/sock foot while gliding on the other skate). Then added a little underpush/normal push carve to the paddle skating. The static balancing positions with one skate are amazingly hard on your leg muscles. I was contantly shaking my legs to try and flush the lactic acid.
So far the week had gone pretty good, we did have a couple of falls, but not as many as last year. Today Kate fell when a rock got jammed in her wheel hub by the frame, locking up a wheel at speed. When wheels suddenly stop, bad things usually happen :( It wasn´t too bad though, she fell backwards and her wrist guards too most the impact. She got some road rash on her backside but she was able to skate back. A couple of days ago, Keven took a dive as well. He hit some bad pot holes and fell forwards. His elbo pads absorbed most of the impact but he was at speed, so they slipped up and then on his left side he scraped off his elbo, down to the bone. He had to go to the clinic for that :( He´s doing ok now, but he won´t be skating for a while. Its not worth the risk of re'injuring his arm. With luck he´ll heal up quick and not be out of the race he was planning on entering after this training week. It just goes to show, skating is not risk free, and the safety equipment does work. Especally at the speeds we operate at, being mindful of safety is pretty important.
After finishing the evening skate and logging a total of 54Km for the day (27 in the morning and 27 in the afternoon) we did some good stretching and then heading in to wolf down the hotel buffet. Then it was of to the pubs further down the strip. The hotel guys told us a good lounging place was ¨Cheers¨. We found out though when we got there that it was family restoraunt. It did have a nice area where you could sit and relax, but in the center area they were playing a weird kids show. They had a big video screen with song and dance, and 3 or 4 live people doing dancing to the video while being dressed up in funky costumes. I was kind of bizzare, I´ve never seen that mix in a restoraunt before. I guess the kids liked it though. The pubs and stuff all cater to the tourists, so the song/dance was kind of a mash up of different languages against a hyper fast drum and base dance music. It was kind of sureal! :)
It was a great training day though, good mileage and I think I now have a way to manage the raw skin/blisters. Tomorrow is our day off, and I´m going to try and rent a bike so I can ride up into the mountains and get some scenic pictures up there. I´ll keep you posted as the adventure continues...
(^_^)/
mike.
Skate Camp Day 4: Born to Ride
Today was a long ride in the saddle. David and I left the hotel a little after 10AM and got back to the hotel just after 6:30PM. Factoring out stops and stuff we were in the saddle for about 6 hours. We rented bikes from the hotel, but mine was on short notice so I was only able to get a normal pedal bike. It was ok, but I had a much harder time hauling it up the mountain roads than I normally would have :( Speaking of mountain roads, the tour was something like this:
0k Start at our Hotel 3k north - Port Alcudia (the cities and ports are separate) 9k north - Port Polenca 15k east - cap de Formentor (half way up) 24k west - back to Port Polenca 7k west - Polenca 18k west - Lluc (the monestary) 13k south - Camanent 10K east - to main road between Polenca and Sa Pobla ---------------------------- At this point we got onto little country roads and had to do some exploring to find paths going east to home. ---------------------------- 10k back to outside area of Alcudia 4k back to hotel
The grand total from the map, is 95k. I think its a good estimate, in fact I think its conservative, because we had to go through many, many switch backs on the mountains, and in the contry side we explored dead end roads and stuff to find our way back. I think we may have actually done a full century ride, but I´ll stand by the 95K :)
It was a good tour, in fact I think it was my first real bike tour. You know where you just get on and ride for a day. I got lots of amazing pictures, we were able to see the whole west/east corner of the island. We went up to Formentor first, its part of the mountain range that forms a cliff at the sea edge in the corner of the island. We climbed half way up (a little more actually) to the first look out point. Lots of great pictures there. Lots of switch backs to. Switch backs are supposed to make it easier, but when you spend 30 minutes climbing on your bike, your definition of ´fun´ becomes more conservative :( The way done was much faster though :) The scenery was beautiful, and deadly at the same time! The switch backs have little 2 foot stone walls at the edge, but you hit one, you won´t even notice it on your way over :(
After that we cam back along the top edge of the island, and came into the mount range again. We spent an hour or so climbing through endless switchbacks to get the top of the range, and then dip into them a bit to reach the hidden monestary. Actually not so hidden, they had a tourist shop and restoraunt. The later was the important one as it had a bathroom! Thy also had a botanical garden and the monestary had lots of great architecture so plenty to see. We had some pizza at the restoraunt, but we wolfed it down pretty quick. Riding requires fuel! :)
After refueling (stomach and camel back) we got back in the saddle. We had to climb a bit to get out of the trough at the top of the range, but one that was done it was a hugh downhill through loads of switchbacks. David was more brave then me, and took the downhill a higher speed. I was quite content to keep the speed under control, especially on the switchbacks. Many of them turn _more_ than 180 degrees and the turn is blinded by rockfaces or trees. I was quite happy to be conservative. Perhaps next time I´ll crank up the speed a bit. Barry said he might do a camp here in the fall :)
As we came out of the mountains there was a never ending ¨ding-dong¨ sound, it turned out to be cow bells on sheep...lots of sheep! I made sure to get some pictures of them :) At one point we even had to wait for a herd of sheep to be moved off the road. You know your on the back roads when...
Once on flatland we decided to hit the country roads to keep the ride interesting. Maybe a little climbing here and there but at least not just the uninteresting flatness of the main highways. We cut east towards Camanet and then north east towards Polenca, but instead of going all the way to Polenca we cut east again to get into the country roads and bike paths between there and Alcudia. We had to follow some dead ends and explore a bit to work our way back, but it turned out ok. We were able to come out on one of the paths that we skate on, at that point we were practically home.
We got back around 6:30PM and my legs were tired, got some sun burn, but other than that, no worse for the wear. :) I tanked up at dinner and then went to the grocery store for a water run. The tap water here tastes aweful, so everynight you can see us doing water runs to the grocery store. After that I was so tired that I just decided to throw in the towel and get shut eye. I went to sleep just after 10PM and got up around 7:45AM. It was a good rest, but I think my legs would like more ;)
I´m off for this mornings technique session, we are doing more video analysis...
(^_^)/
mike.
Skate Camp Day 5: Push It!
Today was solid technical day. Our morning session was a follow up video analysis to see the improvements we´ve made over the past week. My knees are finally together and my form is looking a lot better but now I have to get deeper weight transfer from side to side. When I get hoem I´m going to buy a camcorder with a tripod so I can do lot more video analysis on my own. Its great feedback becasue you can see all the stuff that as a skater, its just impossible to see. After skating back to the hotel and doing the video analysis is well into lunch time so we broke off and decided to come back earlier than usual at 3PM for the afternoon seesion.
I made use of the lunch break to cook up my own lunch this time around. I had some shrimp, pasta and tomato sauce from the grocery store, coked em all up, put them together, and it actually tasted pretty good :) I still have half of each left so I´ll probably do the same thing tomorrow.
Originally I had planned to work on the diet while I was here, but with the skating activity its been really hard not to eat. When getting back after a skate, I´m usually really, really, really hungry! Still though, I´ve been having leafy greens and vegitable as my first course for all my evening meals, and I´ve been trying to avoid the greasier parts of breakfast. So far its going ok, I think I did actually loose some weight. I can make the belt tighter now for sure :)
The afternoon session was technical again, but finally we coverd double push drills. Barry went over a few progressive drills that he uses to give people a crash course in double push. Tomorrow he´s going to give us a few more that he uses when he has more time to teach people. Most of the drills I know from the DVD he´s already put out, but it was still really good to go through it in person and clear up a couple of areas where I had the timing mixed up. I´m basically about 3/4 of the way to being able to double push. I also know now how to make it work on my longer skates, basically you have to have your weight back on your heals to get the necessary carve on the underpush. In fact I´m pretty sure now that weather you have long skates or not this is required.
Anyways, its just great to see that I am pretty close to learning it. I have more work to do, but it is definitely within grasp. :)
After the technical session we went out for a skate. I kept up with the fast pack up to the fist regrouping point, and then decided to ease up and stay back with the middle pack. My legs still weren´t recovered from the peddle bike up the mountain deal, and my blisters were starting to hurt a little again. I wanted to keep the blisters under control so dropped back to the middle pack for the remainder. Its really demoralizing once you get blisters, you want to go 100% but you can´t because you know there will be even worse blisters down the road :( Fortunately I´ve been able to manage them for this last part of the course with those little ring pads. I´m out of those now so tomorrow I´ll try cutting up some thick felt that I got from one of the other skaters. I should be able to fashion my blister support device ;)
The afternoon skate was 32K so I got some distance in. As I say though it wasn´t particulaily fast. All things considered it was probably a good idea ot slow down on that one. Tomorrow is the last day, so I´ll probably try to go hard again one last time.
The week is going by suprisingly fast. Tomorrow is frday, last day of the camp, and then I leave the hotel on saturday at 10AM for my flight on st 1:35. Another jump over the pond and I should be back in Ottawa on sunday. Hopefully I´ll be able to adjust pretty quickly. I was able to adjust on this end fairly well, althugh I had some nights where I kind of woke up once in a while in the middle of the night.
The stay at the hotel has been good. Its comfortable and the food is ok. There are loads of families and kids though, so you constantly have to look down because they are running around randomly all over the place. The little copper tops have lots of energy! I wish I had that much engergy! The hotel puts on on little song and dance shows for the families. Some are fancier than others. They had a fairly fancy one the other night, the women dong the songs and stuff were pretty good. Except, they weren´t actually women. The kids didn´t seem to care though, to them it was just song and dance. Among us skaters though it brought out some stories of high heal adventures at costume parties :) Its all good :)
So, a good technical day with some light skating thrown in for good measure. Tomorrow is the last day and I´m looking forward to getting more double push drills from Barry. My classic technique has improved and I know where to make the final tweaks now. The camp has been great, and tomorrow I´ll try to skate hard one last time before getting ready for the flight home.
(^_^)/
mike.
Skate Camp Day 6: The Long March
The last official training day was little less intense. Barry caught a virus and had to cancel the official sessions. However, the group still split up and went out on different tours. In the morning I went with Eric, Tom, David and Anders on a tour to Muro and then up to Mardalita. It was an awesome tour, many, many chances to great pictures of actual Mallorca villiages and suroundings, rather than just the tourist parts of the islands. We stopped for lunch in Mardalita as well. We had a baggettes with that really thin sliced ham they do in spain. I forget the official name of it, but its awesome stuff, if you don´t like ham, you will after trying it. :)
I´ll be setting up a photo gallery when I get back. Sadly, during the tour my blisters were giving me a huge amount of excruciating pain. There were times when I was pretty much skating on one leg, I couldn´t get my weight transfer going and at the end pretty much limped home :( Still though I´m glad I went there was a lot of stuff to see on this tour, I definitely didn´t want to miss it.
In the afternoon when the other guys went on another tour I decided to finally throw in the towel and let my blisters rest. It was really depressing, I wanted to skate so much, but the pain, the pain! Plus if I make the blisters too bad, then I will loose valuable training time between now and the marathon at the end of may. :(
So, I bailed on the afternoon skate but the morning tour through Muro allowed me to notch up another 41K. I´m definitely going to rock the mileage club when I get back :)
In the evening Barry was feeling well enough to host a question and answer session and we took a hour and half to run through all things related to fitness training, equipement and so on. After that it was finaly good-byes for people who were leaving early. The remainder of us met in the morning (I´m writting this blog the next day) for breakfast and really final good-byes :) So now, I´m just waiting for my tax pick up to get back to Palma and the main airport. After that it will be an other 22 hour trek back to O-town. Now that I´ve been through it once it won´t be so bad. Still though I´m not looking forward to missing some sleep before monday morning at work. Mondays are tough enough already! ;)
Anyways, stay tuned, I have loads of pictures and I will set up a gallery when I get back. Mallorca hasn´t been completely overrun with tourism just yet, all through its pretty close! You´ll see from the pictures that if your willing to explore a little you can still find a lot of Mallorca to be really beautiful.
See you soon!
(^_^)/
mike.
