Training Camp

Paula Newby-Fraser bounced around the pool deck in Solana Beach, cracking jokes and giving advice to triathletes in training.

The audience--some working to improve their swimming technique, some finishing a bicycle ride and preparing to jump in the pool--listened attentively, and wisely so. After all, Newby-Fraser is possibly the best triathlete ever, winner of a record 22 Ironman races, including eight world championships at Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.

At 38, Newby-Fraser is fit as ever--last February she won Ironman South Africa by more than 20 minutes--but these days she’s concentrating on helping age-groupers get faster at camps put on by Multisports.com, a triathlon training company she co-founded.

“These people are paying money to be here and have us yell at them,” Newby-Fraser said, smiling and shaking her head. “And they love it.

“This is supposed to be play time, a vacation for them, but quite frankly if I wanted to play, I’d go to Club Med.”

Of course, triathletes have always looked for a different sort of paradise: nirvana through sheer exhaustion.

But this is no boot camp. The workouts at the five-day camp are more instructional than intolerable. First-time attendees pay $795, returners $695, to learn to swim, bike, run and work out more efficiently from an all-star list of athletes. Besides Newby-Fraser, there’s 1999 Hawaii Ironman winner Lori Bowden, 1997 champion Heather Fuhr, 1984 Olympic cycling gold medalist Steve Hegg, 1981 Hawaii Ironman winner John Howard and Scott Tinley, one of the sport’s most heralded pioneers and a two-time Hawaii winner.

“It’s like you are going to a baseball camp and Ken Griffey Jr. is going to teach you how to hit,” said Newport Beach’s Jim Coffman, who attended two of the camps in 1999. “You’re not going with wannabes here, you are going with people who are proven champions.”

Jason De La O, a 27-year-old from Balboa Island who attended this month’s camp, is a triathlon novice, picking it up last year and quickly becoming hooked. So he took some vacation and enrolled in the camp. He wasn’t disappointed.

De La O was exposed to much he needed help with: proper nutrition, strength training, swimming and bicycling techniques, the importance of speedy transitions between events and more. He was given an anaerobic threshold test to determine his optimal heart rate for training.

At the end of the camp, he sat down with Fuhr for 45 minutes and went over his personal workout plan. Previously, his idea was to swim, run and bike as much as possible.

“Now I know rest is just as important as working out,” he said. “You tend to be a masochist the opposite way, to where you just punish your body so you are used to it. Basically, what I got out of them is if you punish your body all the time, when you get to race day you aren’t going to perform.”

The camp staff tries to drive home the message of moderation, said Paul Huddle, a former professional triathlete and a Multisports.com partner. Training for triathlons, especially the Ironman distance of 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike and 26.2-mile run, obviously takes a lot of time.

Daily workouts and weekly long runs and bike rides add up, often totaling 15 to 20 hours a week or more. The more a person works out, the better he or she feels, Huddle said, up to a point.

“When you start getting in shape, it’s addictive and it can take over your life,” he said. “You see that all the time, people go from being happy human beings to treating the sport as a be-all end-all and before you know it, they are not fun to be around.

“We tell people they need to fit their training around their lives and not the other way around.”

Andrew Burton, another camp attendee, maintains balance by working in a Laguna Woods bicycle and triathlon shop. He left the restaurant business 2 1/2 years ago, hoping to maximize his time working out.

“I thought I would have all kinds of time to train, but it doesn’t work that way,” Burton said.

Burton, 34, who splits time between Carlsbad and Newport Beach, was using the camp as a refresher course, having taken it four years ago as a triathlon neophyte.

Swimming has always been his weak event, so he was disappointed to have to sit out of instruction in the pool because he was recovering from the flu.

“It’s good to watch other people swim,” said Burton, sitting next to the pool on the brisk morning. “But it’s not helping my stroke right now.”

Burton has finished two Ironman-distance events, most recently Ironman Canada in 1997, and is trying to improve his time enough to qualify for the Hawaiian Ironman this year.

Before the camp, Parker Blackman of Balboa Island didn’t figure he would attempt any race farther than a Half Ironman. Like many, Blackman was drawn to the sport after watching on television Julie Moss’ stumbling, crawling second-place finish in the 1982 Hawaiian Ironman.

“That image was etched in my brain,” Blackman said, “and I thought, even at that early age, ‘I’ve got to try this.’ ”

Blackman, 32 and a former Stanford volleyball standout who had a brief pro beach volleyball career, finally did six years ago, but has kept to the shorter races.

After the camp, he’s reassessing his goals. “I’m more inclined,” he said, “to give it a shot.”

Blackman gave it a go on an afternoon ride during the camp. Students were offered a chance at a hard ride with Mike Pigg, a top professional.

Blackman and four others went with Pigg, who started at 19 mph for half an hour, picked it up to 23 mph for another 30 minutes, then broke Blackman at 26 or 27.

Blackman turned around and rode back to the hotel. A few minutes later Pigg rode up.

“Thanks for hammering me into the ground,” Blackman told him. “He said, ‘That’s what you wanted isn’t it?’ ”

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Multisports.com’s camps in Solana Beach this year are today through Sunday and March 19-24. For information, call (858) 793-6110 or access https://www.multisports.com