Deeside 2017 by Sarah Horsler

The ‘Deeside’ training camp is a yearly training camp for W/M16 for about 18 athletes and runs for 8 days in July. Located at Templars Park scout campsite, on the bank of the river Dee, 10km West of Aberdeen. The camp consists of a variety of training activities including: night event and relay, daily training courses, relays and Tour champs. Not only were there different event types but also a brilliant selection of areas to train on, with a mixture of sand dunes and steep contoured forests. In total, I ran 48km during the tour, so fitness is an important aspect to training along with the correct mind set and map skills.

 A day in the camp usually consisted of Training, lunch, River/sea swim (even in July the water is only roughly 13⁰C), free time (where we would have showers, play football or rounders), Classroom session (looking at training plans, tactics and ideas) and then sometimes a night event. However, although the tour was predominantly well-planned training courses, the intersperse of river swimming, team relays and other such activities gave the tour a memorable experience not just in terms of training.

The photographs below are one I took of various rivers we swam in and at the bottom is one of a bay and cave we visited.