Daily Archives: August 2, 2012

We made the move from St, Moritz Switzerland to Kamen, Germany via Europe’s superb train system. Inaki made a short side trip to London to get his credentials and to familiarise with the Olympic Village. We made a short side trip to Berlin to spend a day cycling around this wonderful city. The following day we met up at the Sportcentrum in Kamen.

The life of a high performance ahtlete is not all hard work and our stay in Kamen proved that quite graphically. Every need was taken care of. The only hardship, if it can be called that, was slow and intermittent internet connections. Kamen is a small rural town about an hour away by train from Dussledorf. We had great food, very comfortable accommodations, lots of care from the medical and therapy staff, great training facilities and interesting places in the countryside to work out.

There was some hard work done by Inaki at the training camp but it was focused and concentrated on high quality preparation for his race on August 4^th. We had a relatively poor workout in one of two attempts to test race fitness. The day was quite humid and Inaki was still feeling the effects of adjusting to the lower altitude. Rather than stress over this setback we regrouped, rearranged our schedule and put in another competition readiness workout in two days time.

Rather than use the track on site as we did last time, this time we went out into the countryside and measured out a course on some paved bike trials that ran through rye and corn fields. This time everything was right. Inaki worked hard to go slow enough to stay within race pace. Each repetition was better than the last. Inaki did this in spite of several unplanned events.

When we had measured the route the day before there was no one else around and there was nothing else aside from the rye and corn waving in the breeze. The day of the workout was different. First, there was poop all over the road, the farmers were fertilising prior to harrowing their fallow fields. Then the farmer needed to drive his tractor and poop wagon on the paved path forcing a showdown between Ianki and the tractor (Inaki won). Then it was dog walking time and most of the local dog/owner pairs came out to walk on the bike path. None of this made us miss a beat until a massive thunder storm moved in and started its deluge with less than 500m left in the workout.

With near gale force winds blowing in our faces and rain coming down so hard that it was filling up the roads, we made our way back to the Sportcentrum very happy and fully satisfied that we were ready for a fine performance in London. It was now time for the final phase in our preparation.

While both Ben Thorne and Evan Dunfee were busy with their International competitions Inaki Gomez was actively pursuing his next phase of preparation for the Olympics in London. Based on his earlier success with performing after training at altitude we decided that another altitude session would be the right type of preparation for the Olympic race. Another factor in Inaki’s performance success was in working closely with the Australian walks team. When we found that the Australian’s were inviting Inaki to train with them again at their altitude camp in St. Moritz we jumped at the chance.

The sessions in St. Moritz started slowly with performance being challenging in the mile high atmosphere. Over the three week period that Inaki was working at altitude this changed into Inaki being able to meet or exceed prior performance levels. He was getting faster for longer periods, just what we were looking for.

Blair Miller and I joined Inaki for his final week in St. Moritz in part to observe his progress and in part to enjoy the place. St. Mortiz in the summer is far more accessible for the non-filthy rich than it is in the winter. After several days of invigorating and steadily improving workouts we were ready for the next phase in our preparation, the Athletics Canada training camp at the Sportcentrum in Kamen, Germany.