Pacific City Training Camp: Days 1 & 2

For our 6th annual summer training camp we’ve ventured to Pacific City after spending the last two years in Sunriver. While we’ll miss miniature golf, running with the South Eugene crew at Elk Lake, jumping off the bridge into the Deschutes River, and the beauty of Benham Falls, we expect to have a great week on the coast.

This is by far and away our biggest camp ever with over 20 boys (including Camas High’s Shane Geiger) and seven girls; the boys have a huge house close to the beach while the girls are staying in a smaller house about a half mile away. As we arrived on Thursday afternoon, the wind was howling from the north, scuttling our plans for an easy run on the beach. Instead we made an effort to run on some trails inland, but the soft sand there sent us to the roads for an easy hour. Some of the boys were limited to 45 minutes, but everyone emerged healthy – always a key to a good camp. We quickly adjourned to the beach for some core work – while our towels blew away.

On Friday we ran an “out and back”; this is a fairly difficult effort with the “out” portion at a slightly taxing pace and the “back” very brisk. We had a pretty large group (12) on the eight mile option, with another eight boys going six miles.
Luke Wiltshire had a great run, with his last four miles in 21:45; Joel Turkheimer and Musa Ahmed were about 20 seconds back, followed by Kevin O’Malley, Shane Geiger, and Taylor Bergmann. Taylor Morgan had a bad reaction to something he ate the night before, while Sam Wotipka had yet to arrive from his annual pilgrimage to Joe Fulton’s Timberhill Camp. Our younger athletes also ran well over six miles. All in all, it was a very fine effort – over a much longer distance than our tempo runs this summer.

Late in the afternoon we ran an easy two miles to THE dune, followed by more core, flexibility, and balance work. Of course, almost everyone climbed to the top of the dune and then raced down… as is required in Pacific City.

A great start to our week… more to come!