This is the view of the main pool from the cafe

Our triathlon training camp have been put on ice for quite a few years, there are always some suggestions come to my mind but those are far from ideal, until we visited Thanyapura.

In the first week of October, we spent a short few days staying at Thanyapura Phuket for a site visit and joining some of their training sessions on swim, bike and run!

We took morning flight from Hong Kong and landed around noon, quickly pick up the rental car, less than 30mins drive we arrived at Thanyapura.

Quick checked-in our rooms spacious and clean is what we need!

Then we got Pui from Thanyapura to show us around their sports complex facilities before we had lunch at their main restaurant around 2pm, warmly greeted by Sacha the ambassador of Thanyapura!

iPad menu from the main restaurant with rich selection for both normal diet and plant-based menu!

And hey this guys look familiar – “Hello Luke! Oh HKIS StingGrays is doing their 8 days swim camp here!”

Happy bump into Luke and Vangie! One of the inspiration couple in Triathlon!

Sacha showed their bike shop for bike rental, meeting their on-site mechanic Madhu he helped setting up 3 of our bike with our specified sizing/fitting requirement, we only need to bring him the saddle and paddles, everything done in a short while.

They put the swim lanes availability on the TV screens

Gigi found out, ‘hey they have swim drill at 4pmlet’s try that!’ not long after that and settled down, we are in the 25m pool to attend the drill session by coach Madhu.

60mins sessions in 2 lanes, some kicking pulling, catch-up, short sprint, some heads up swim, with the participants all wearing difference kind of IRONMAN swim cap they all just spend a week or even a month training at Thanyapura, first taste of inspiration!

After the session we jumped into the 50m pool for 15mins swim, wow! 2.5m depth and the water temperature just right for swim training under such hot climate! Impressive!

That’s how we end the first day of training, back to the room and realized their golden sunset happen around 6pm it must be superior if we swam under that!

First night in Phuket we drove to Thalang to revisit my favourite restaurant – FLAME! Of course a massages cannot be missed!

Second day we wake up at 6am, breakfast then joining the Thanyapura ride at 7:30am.

It’s the compliments brick session in two distances, mostly on 40k ride lead by coach Madhu, Chris, Cat and I on 70k ride lead by two of the foreign riders while Gigi joining their tennis session by coach Boss.

We firstly rode though the rubber tree Forrest at a very easy conversational pace, early morning in Phuket was nice and chilly 23C, gently riding in double pace line heading north to the direction of Phang Nga, until 20k first group turn back to Thanyapura and only 3 of us the Hong Kong Sonic riding across the Sarasub bridge that connect Phuket island to Phang Nga, where the road are lot more quiet and they started testing our speed! A short refuel in 7-11 at 35k we rode at steady plus pace back to Thanyapura! Quick transition we off to run, on the 500m running track right next to the bike room! That was just 10am, the track was hot! 4k we were really toasted and well done!

Red Hot 500m track! Cat running 4k after 70k ride, it was roughly 35C under the blazing Sun!

Best place for Heat acclimatization, turning Chris become a fit man!

Healthy vegan lunch at Thanyapura, not to miss they have a vegan buffet lunch available! Phuket is one of the vegan friendly city in Asia, and learning more and more world class triathletes turning plant-based diet, you may try one or two! And alkaline water station everywhere!

Short nap after lunch, Cat, Gigi and I visited Z-Coaching at Cherngtalay pool for their quality swim session at 4pm while Chris choose to stay at Thanyapura for massage. They have the entire 25m pool with chill fresh water, 3 levels spread across all lanes, very nice venue and friendly people! The team is true to training, no complaint no bargain, just dig deep at the hard set, they love toys, paddle, bouy, bands….. and we enjoyed that session very much!

Z-Coaching is a friendly triathlon team by former IRONMAN World Champion Jurgen Zack, they run 2 sessions a day for the entire week, weekly schedule and content post on Facebook page so we can join their drop-in session or entire week with training fee applied. Most of the meeting point are in Cherngtalay/Bang Tao area 20-30mins drive from Thanyapura.

After swim we decided to end the day 2 at Thanyapura food festivals at the lounge with Gigi signature Gin Tonic!!!

Effortless Running workshop by Coach Erik

In the third day we got invited to an 1.5hrs morning run by coach Erik for his effortless running method. Erik is a keen running and triathlon coach and develop a ‘Effortless Running’ method which emphasis that running is pulling and falling. He lead us for a warm up, though some drills, running thought the 7.5k loop around Thanyapura for us to experience that new running technique. It’s a great running workshop not just about running but exchanging the concept from coaching, run technique to the assessment of stability.

Chris is the most beneficial from this workshop! He will run a lot better from now on!

My takeaway from this workshop is, there are something align with my coaching concept where the landing always right under the torso, no over striding, and slightly lean forward then the stride will naturally be landing on mid-foot. Thanks coach Erik! We hope to see you again in our camp next year!

Erik guided us his effortless run method via the sequence of warm up, drill, some delivery and some running along the 7.5k route surrounding Thanyapura

Third day is busy since we only have half day before checkout, we want to maximize our stay so we went to another café where they made fresh salad bowl, whey protein shake, coffee, smoothies all healthy stuff you want to refuel and recovery for next session!
Then we spent 30mins stretching and foam rolling at the gym, then another swim to recover, and try out their hot and ice bath before our late lunch and say goodbye to Thanyapura!

healthy bowl of salad, or fancy a whey potein shake? All make for athletes need!

There are still many to visit such as Health & Wellness Centre, take a look at thanyapura.comit’s certainly a one-stop shop for our upcoming training camp!

We’ve got some questions in the mind before the trip and they all got checked with Thanyapura!

- How the swimming lanes booking and availability work? For group training we need to book in advanced, and bring our own toys

- Is washing machine and dry available? Yes 90b coins each time!

- Can I do lead cycle/run session as I don’t know the road….? Yes they have full spectrum of weekly activities with coaches included.

In fact, outside of swim, bike, run, they also run regular sessions of tennis, cross fits, thai boxing, yoga, aqua core…..check out https://www.thanyapura.com/sports/club/

There are few ways of running a training camp….but it will be hard not to choose Thanyapura as the base to stay in! Also give yourself a week away to embrace it!

- Offseason camp – 50/50 on training and learning new technique and gaining new insight.

- Pre-season camp – 70/30 on training and knowledge gain to condition upcoming season.

- Peak week pre-race camp 100% focus on training, adopting and eating well

Stay tunes for our Training Camp 2020! We will start planning during off season, and it will be a lot more than just swim, bike and run!