There are several components of a training camp that make it such an important part of an athlete’s success story. One of the nicest advantages is the heat. During winter The Netherlands can be pretty cold. It’s not great when you have to do a couple laps around the park twice a week, and it’s a lot worse when you have to show up at the track at 10 a.m. every day. Above that: muscles prefer warm weather, which makes a sunny destination a better place for technical or hard training sessions than home.
The difference in surroundings can also be of value. It can have a great mental advantage to not to have to show up to the same track every day for a year, running the same laps. Training on different tracks also mean that mean that the skills you learn will be more translatable; especially when it comes to the more technical aspects. This translatability can be vital during Championships, when the first time you see a track could be during the first round.
There’s other advantages to leaving your usual stomping ground behind: it eliminates distractions. At home you have to consider groceries, cooking, cleaning, friends, family, (school, work), whereas on training camps everything outside of training is taken care of for you. You have one job and one purpose: to train fucking hard. And when you’re not busy training hard, to make sure you recover in such a way, that you’re ready to train hard again at the next opportunity.
This is also the pitfall of training camps. Rarely does your world become so small, as when you’re sitting in your hotel room, with food and coffee only three floors down, the track right around the corner and the same people around for 3-4 weeks. Just like many of the side effects of being a professional athlete, training camps are something you have to learn. When do you wanna hang out with the group, when do you wanna be alone, when do you have to take some extra recovery time and when do you need to get out of the hotel for a bit to reload. Like most things about being a professional athlete, it’s a complicated balance. (More complicated for some than others.)
Of course there are other (more budget-friendly) options to mimic the effects of a training camp. Finding warmth in The Netherlands during the winter might be a tad challenging, but you can add some variations to your runs by simply changing up your route, or you can find a new challenge by taking a look at the going-ons of a different track club than where you usually train, or join a new running group for a different experience. There very small variations that can make your training just that bit more interesting (and effective).

This dependency on teammates will not set will with everyone, however; people who enjoy to a little more control over their success will often find team sports very frustrating. Airing this frustrations rarely does any good to performance, as a good social cohesion van be vital in a team when you want an optimal result.
In individual sports, you are, however, not dependent on other people for your performance. This might suit some people better, but it also comes with more pressure. A bad day can’t be masked by someone else’s good day, and when you lose there’s no one to blame but yourself.
When it comes to social skills you don’t learn as much in individual sports; being ego-centrical has no consequences and you’re not dependent on people-skills to get a win.
But, a social aspect can be built into your training as an individual athlete, if you so wish. When you’re just started a new sport, an common tip is to train in a group- the social pressure means you won’t skip a training as easily and you can push and support each other to get more out of your workout. The same goes for teamsports, which have fixed training times that are ‘mandatory’ and where competition within the team during training can push the entire team to a higher level. The advantage of training together has been so well-documented and researched, that even in the most individual sports, many athletes still choose to train together. Especially training with people who are better than you (or good at other aspects of training) can make you work harder during training in order to close that gap.
Track and field is most definitely a sport like that: an individual sport in which most athletes choose to train in a team setting. Above that, it includes competitions (Team Championships) and events (relay) that do include a team aspect. In this manner, you can get all the advantages of an individual sport and the advantages of a team sport, all in one.

I’m not any less guilty of that than anyone else. If I’ve had a bad training session I won’t post about it. After a bad race I’m quite to post #ontothenextone, whilst a good race can take up to three posts – especially if the pictures turn out good. In this manner I create, and with me many others (athletes), a version of reality that’s a tad bit brighter than reality. It’s not a terrible thing, but it’s something that people should be aware of.

It’s human nature to compare yourself with the people around you, but in our technologically advanced world it’s so easy to take a peep into other people’s lives, that the group we’re comparing ourselves to gets increasingly bigger. We’re no longer just comparing our faces with that of our friends but also with that of (world-) famous influencers. Our bodies with endless pictures shared by models throughout the day. I can compare my daily training with not only my trainingpartners, but any World Champion or any of my competitors. And they seldomly make me feel better…

It’s easy to get lost amidst endless photoshopped Instagram-proofed images, and start doubting yourself. So it’s important to step back from time to time and remember what you do before you post a picture (take 50 photos, use and editing app/filter, text three friends to pick their absolute favourite), is also what many other people do before posting a picture. And that all your edited pictures can make other people insecure the same way theirs do you.

To conclude: don’t use Instagram as a tool to measure your reality against.

There’s a downside to all these things though. Because you’re away from home a lot, you spend a lot of time missing family and friends- especially if you need to make a move to the other side of the country (or even another country) in order to get to the level you want to achieve in your sport. And the travelling can become lonely as well, when you’re in your third country in a week for another race, with a roommate you’ve known for about half an hour and who speaks only the littlest of English, there can be moments when you want nothing more than to just be at home on your own couch.

Being a professional athlete is not a job that ends when you get home from training. You still have to think about recovery and eat right and sleep enough and there’s tomorrow’s workout to get ready for. You will never get home from work and not be a professional athlete anymore- you don’t get to clock out on until the season ends.

Besides that, it’s not always easy for (Dutch) athletes to make ends meet. I’ve always been lucky to be part of a relay team that consistently places for global finals, which means that we get to have funding. It’s not going to make anyone rich but it does an excellent job of paying rent. A lot of other athletes fall a little short of this. So next to a similar amount of hours at the track, they also have to show up for a (part-time) job. This takes up a lot of energy and can be a very intense combination.

It’s also the most important reason a lot of Dutch talent quits before reaching elite levels: they simply can’t afford to keep doing it. Being a professional athlete requires a large investment, of time, of money (for coaches, for trainingcamps, for treatments, etc), and until you’re part of the World’s best there’s not much of a pay-out. At least, not of the monetary kind. Because, glamourous or not- there’s few things that compare to standing on the starting line and hear a stadium filled with 50.000 people get more quiet than you could’ve thought they could, and you get to be one of the people running there.