Seth Totten Shares His Experiences Training At High Altitude
Mammoth is more than a training camp—it is where champions are made.
-Seth Totten
A typical workout day for me in our high altitude training camp in Mammoth looks something like this: the day begins with a five-fifteen wake up call—straight into tights, jackets, gloves and out the door for a pre-workout shake-out. Mammoth is still dark this early, and I often run into bears, stumbling through their last few trashcans before dawn. After the shakeout I spend about an hour stretching, eating (which always includes a BIG cup of coffee) and a few quiet moments to mentally envision and wrap my mind around the day’s training tasks and goals. By seven the team is packed into the suburban and off to train.
After our hard workouts on Tuesdays and Thursdays we have a strength training routine which finds us swinging kettle bells, throwing medicine balls, and looking quite tired and ridiculous to anyone else in the park.
Weights are followed by an ice-cold soak in the creek and then back to the condo for “second breakfast” around noon. As we sit around the “breakfast” table we are exhausted and often delirious with a desire to sleep, yet in this state I have shared some of my best laughs with the guys. Then it is off for another sleep. At three, it’s back out of bed for our afternoon meeting with coach in which we look over the effectiveness and result of our workout, often mile by mile.
Then it is back out the door for an easy forty-five minutes of recovery running. Dinner usually consists of an older team member supervising the freshman crying over a pile of onions, and then the inevitable mad rush of twelve guys fresh off a twenty-mile day trying to fill black-hole’s disguised as appetites.
The evening is then dominated by either another meeting with Coach or a Fifa tournament which is more or less two X-box controllers and twelve laughing guys. When Saturdays roll around we celebrate with a group raiding of the ice cream section at the grocery store. Then it is four or five tubs, twelve spoons and every-man for himself. One of my favorite Mammoth memories was an all-out proper spoon duel over the last scoop of Mint-Chip.
Mammoth is more then an altitude training camp. Better put, Mammoth is more then just training or altitude. Training in the manner we train daily raises questions of who one is as an individual. Though the day described above just sounds like a lot of running, between the lines of the day one is asked questions of their character. Questions of one’s work ethic, questions of one’s desires, dreams, drive.
As my alarm clock rings every morning I must answer the question as to whether or not I want to be a champion. Champions do not simply show up at the track as a champion. Champions are made by choosing to be the first one out of bed, choosing to be prepared mentally and physically for every workout, prepared for discomfort, choosing the work, completely committed to the task at hand. Champions are made deep in the mountains where there is no glory, and no one is watching.
Mammoth is more than a training camp—it is where Champions are made.
