This past weekend was our training weekend at Lake San Antonio with all the TnT teams, SF/Marin, East Bay, Redwood/Wine Country and Ironteam. It's about 200 miles south, near King City and Pablos Blahses...I forget what that city is called.
Wild Turkeys at camp
Since I didn't get paid until the 7th, and I have been spending money like it's, er, money...I had to wait to get paid, which was at 12:01am on Friday, before I could buy food provisions for the weekend. June picked me up at a ridiculous hour so we could go food shopping, Sports Basement shopping (hello! hot boys at SB at 9am on Fridays!) and then hit the road. We set out at about 10am, had a leisurely lunch at Denny's and arrived at camp around 2pm. We were the first ones there from our entire team. Not really a big deal except we were borrowing a tent from TnT and they hadn't arrived yet. We hung around for about 2 hours until our tents got there and as we started to set up it promptly rained.
June at Denny's
French Slam
French Slammed
Our tent
Disaster thwarted, we grilled up some burgers and headed to a camp meeting where our coaches filled us in on how Saturday was going to go. Back to camp, some more eating and we were in bed by 9pm. Did I mention wild boar populate this area? That night, as I kept sliding downhill off my sleeping mat and freezing my ass off, I dreamt that something was stepping on me throught the tent. As if they had walked up on the tent, collapsed it and happened to be standing on my left arm. I moved my arm to shake the thing off and, naturally, it bit my hand and its jaws clamped shut. Then it turned into one of those dreams where you can't make any sounds. I was just laying there trying to yell WILD BOAR! WILD BOAR! Woke up and then heard every body in camp go to the bathroom and flush the toilets about 7oo times.
Saturday!
June and I decided that we wanted to start the swim early with an open water clinic. Makes sense since this would be my 3rd time doing actual swimming (as opposed to doggy paddle) in open water. We headed down to the boat launch area, which was our official transition area, to start a 9:15 am swim. Coach Megan said we'd swim out to the first bouy and then if we wanted to do our olympic distance (.92 mile) we could just go on and do that. Yeah, ok.
I bought a cheapy sports watch right before I left because I wanted to be able to track my times at these practice runs and was able to see what I was swimming. You know, swimming in a lake is ten times better than swimming in the bay, even though Lake San Antonio was only 58 degrees. The water was flavorless and I felt like I wasn't even swimming. I took off and made it to the halfway/turnaround point in 19 minutes. I rested for about a minute and then headed back. It was just amazing, I have completely stopped using my legs to swim and only kick when I need to balance myself or to get my butt back up to the surface. Again, I concentrated on being long and stretching my arm and opposite leg out to its full extention and then on swooshing my arms straight down through the water. At one point, I actually said to myself, I feel like a machine! I wasn't even tired really, my breathing was even and I reached shore and checked my watch and I had done the swim in about 37 minutes. Amazing! I was really shocked since about 12 weeks ago I couldn't really swim. Then I had to actually get out of the water. That took me about another 10 since the shore is rocky and even though I didn't really feel tired, my legs were all wobbly.
Since I did my swim early, I had about an hour to kill before the bike ride. I leisurely changed, chowed 2 Clif Bars, peed about 18 times and got my bike ready. I headed off in the first wave and determined not to have a sucky ride like last weekend, I had my watch set to remind me to eat about every 25-30 minutes. We had about a mile climb out of the parking lot and then settled into a 25 mile course of rolling hills, gradual inclines and steep declines. I'd like to say that the rolling hills on this course weren't actually rolling hills. To me, rollers are the kind that you do a little climb up and then zip down at top speed so you can zip about half way up the next hill with minimal peddling. Between these rollers were long stretches of false flats and that sucks.
Anyways, at Sports Basement I had grabbed some gels to try. I don't think I had ever actually had a gel before and the thought of putting chocolate or vanilla flavored crap in my mouth, that has the consistancy of vaseline ,was not very appealing. I opted for some citrus varieties and different brands so I could test some. Somewhere near the turnaround I decided to try a gel. I pulled out an orange Hammer Gel, ripped open the top and squished some in my mouth. As soon as itwent in I just new this wasn't going down easy. I had to roll it around in my mouth for a second and then choke it down. The front end had a sickly sweet orange flavor and the back end tasted like f**king cheese! Like, CAN CHEESE that you accidentally sprayed on a gummy bear. But, hey, I thought. It can't be THAT bad. So I tried it again. And again there was NO WAY. I chucked the package (litterbug!) and I had to get it out of my mouth asap so I spit it...right? Isn't that what you do. Even as I turned my head away from the wind I knew this was gonna be bad as citrus flavored cheese goo splayed all over my face and shoulders. Hahaha. Nice. I spent the next 2 miles trying to get it off my face.
The way back wasn't so bad. It was such a beautiful sunny, warmish day too. I saw lots of dead squirrel/prairie dog things all over. Sad. Almost missed a turn back into the camp ground and zipped down Lynch Hill to the parking lot. I did the ride in about 1:50 minutes? I can't remember if I stopped my watch for breaks. June came in shortly after me and she was all, do you want to do a run? Of course I don't want to. But did I? Yes. Off we went with two other girls, one named Deb who I am in love with since she was the one who, while I was dying on the run, suggested we turn around much sooner than I had anticipated. Yay Deb! We did a short 20 minuter and got back to the parking lot where the team was lounging around.
Hez and her saviour, Deb
Since we're anti-social, June and I decided to head back to camp and got a jump on the showers. Once clean, we heated up some chili that June's husband had made and had a nice big salad. Others started to roll in and we wasted time in the sun before the pasta dinner at 5:30.
Malt ball snack, orginially taken by Kara
Lounging at camp, originally taken by Kara
More Lounging
Can you believe that I actually said outloud: I can't eat any more food. No. I can't either. But I did, while I was sitting with the entire team and eating pasta with meat sauce and a salad. I hit my wall after 4 bites. We had some nice entertainment in the form of cute skits and honoree speeches. Then we all gathered in our groups to hear about the run. Then back to camp where we sat around and watched Steve try to make a fire with wet wood. Then we headed down to IronTeam's camp where they were having an IronParty since they finished their long course training in one day and had no reason not to be hungover the next day. June and I hung around a bit and then decided to go to bed. As were were walking back up the path to our tent June suddenly yells WILD ANIMAL! and trains her flashlight on a deer! We stood there and watched it tip toe through camp for a second. Then we started walking again and another wild deer darted out right in front of us! This was amazing to me since to get to us they had to walk through a majority of the campsites. You know, just walking along through tents and coolers.
Firestarter Steve
I had a better sleeping experience on Saturday night. You know, I don't want to say that I hate camping but, it's not really my thing. Or maybe I should say, it's not really my thing when I just exerted my body for about 4 hours and have to be constricted to a cocoon sleeping bag on the ground in 40 degree weather. Heh.
Sunday June and I got up and ripped our tent down, packed up the car and headed down to the transition area for our 6.2 mile run. I have really been wussy about running lately since I just feel like it's not my thing at the moment. Especially since the course sounded horrible. One mile of flat (which coming from a TnT coach means rolling hills) and then 4 miles of a steady incline with some steep bits and then a mile of a steep down hill. I felt pretty good though and ran with Susan my pacer. I like running with her because we chat the whole way and time goes by fast. I did feel that I probably coulda gone a bit faster, since Coach Rand sidled up next to me and then wooshed me away from Susan for about a mile and I felt fine even though I was going faster. She caught up to me at the rest stop and we stayed together. I think she probably wanted to walk up some hills but she kept right there with me. We ran into the parking lot with our teammates cheering us in. I wore shorts, which turned out to be a bad idea as I was constantly pulling them out of my hoohaa the whole run and I looked at Susan and asked: are my shorts up around my neck? Because, you know, that would look stupid when running towards a group of your peers. I did the run in about an hour and 15 minutes, which may actually be an hour and 25 minutes because I forgot to start my watch right away and if I went by Susan's watch, she forgot to stop it at breaks. I like an hour and 15 minutes so I'll stick with that.
June and I then hopped into the car and headed to the showers and then headed out back to Denny's for lunch. We got in around 3:30. I put my stuff away and then vegged on my couch. Woo!
True Athletes
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