It's been a while since I blogged and I really do have to get better about it, but often times there is just nothing exciting happening. Not that any of it is all that exciting, but I'd rather have at least a little something to say. Anyway, finally I do. This past weekend we had the first of what should become an annual QT2 training camp up in Lake Placid, home of the awesome Ironman race. From the first time I went up there in 2004 to race for the first time I absolutely loved it, and every time I go back I feel exactly the same. Seriously, I could live there.
Anyway, I went up on Wednesday, hitching a ride with my friend Trent who conveniently lives nearby and was also attending. It was about 97 degrees while I was packing that morning and before that I barely completed a 35-minute easy run because I was so wiped out. I took several breaks in the midst of packing from sweating so profusely. The drive up was painless and uneventful and we had excellent timing on the ferry and arrived in town after four-and-a-half hours of travel. Had a quick dinner and checked into the hotel.
Tara was the first of my awesome roommates of the weekend to arrive, with her dog Marley who would serve as room 10 mascot. He is not to be confused with my sister's Marley who we lost last September and who outweighed this Marley by a good seventy pounds. We had some time to settle in before Mary and Jennie finally arrived at like 10:30, so we could finally go to sleep to prepare for the first day.
Thursday morning we woke up in time for some breakfast and to meet up with the other campers before heading down to the water for our first workout of camp: a one-loop time trial swim. Not so luckily, the swim course is currently set up for rowing, which extended a "loop" about another 550 yards, or somewhere around there. The water was fantastic and I wished I had brought one of my now-illegal skinsuits instead of my wetsuit since the wetsuit is starting to show its age and I didn't really need it to keep warm, and all of that on/off is not going to help it from a longevity standpoint.
Anyway, we all lined up in the water ready to take off in a mass start of about 29 of us and then it was time for some good, hard swimming. Coming off Ironman Texas last month I am not exactly in prime shape, and as usual, going as hard as I possibly can isn't really my specialty, so it was certainly a challenge, though a good one. I stayed on someone's feet, finding out at the turn that it was Trent, which I decided were good feet because we've raced together a lot and I am pretty sure he has always beat me out of the water, so I pretty much followed him the rest of the way. Thanks, Trent! I finished three seconds behind him, about seventh I think among all of the swimmers in our group. Also, toward the end I did, in fact, feel like I might throw up, so I decided I definitely paced it correctly.
After that we all headed back to change into bike gear for another hard ride, a time trial on the old out and back. We rode back down the back side of the bike course, which I'd never done before. Certainly it is downhill but nothing like the infamous descent on the course itself. Also, the road was in pretty terrible condition for this stretch, so we had to be careful. It was incredibly warm out during this ride, so I was not upset to find out that the time trial was only 4.1 miles and not entirely uphill.
We lined up in the order we'd finished the swim and took off in intervals based on where we finished the swim. So if you finished ten seconds behind the person in front of you, you took off ten seconds after they did. That was kind of fun. It started off pretty painlessly with some downhill and then flattened out before moving up. Did I mention I'm not good at all-out efforts? I reached a point of maximum oxygen deprivation and just felt like I was almost hyperventilating and couldn't go any harder toward the end, so that was not my best performance, but still fun in that weird sort of way that we all find training like this "fun." Then all we had to do was ride back and then hit the roads for some running.
I was feeling pretty beat up and given the heat I didn't think I'd get much out of an actual run, so instead I ran to the lake and then hopped in the water with Mary and Charlie to do some water running. Charlie is forced to water run due to injury and Mary and I were simply there for moral support. If you've ever been forced to water run it is possibly the most boring activity on the face of the planet. But water running with a couple of friends in Mirror Lake on a beautiful day isn't such a bad thing.
We had a tiny bit of time to get ourselves together before our pizza dinner that night to load up for our big ride the next day. There was a sports nutrition talk that night but a few of us headed back early to get some work done and get in bed early since we are pretty well versed on the Core Diet. I'm pretty sure I slept well that night, having gotten used to sharing the bed with Marley curled up near my legs.
Friday morning we were up, well, as late as we could get up while still making it in time to grab something to eat before our easy one-loop swim in the lake. It was much more pleasant without the feeling like I was going to throw up thing going on. Then it was time to hop on the bikes to ride the course. I opted to ride with the middle of three groups given that my super-speediness on the bike in Texas had all but completely vanished, so I knew I was not going to be keeping up with the big guns. The loop was even slower than I expected and I had to skip a bit the second time around in order to not wind up riding way longer than planned. Given that I pulled into the hotel parking lot after exactly six hours of riding, I'd say I did a pretty good job.
I had ridden with people off and on, stopping often to fuel up thanks to Courtney and her wonderful QT2 van with Marley riding shotgun. The weather was mostly nice, although the second time down the descent it was raining which is sort of painful when you're moving 45mph, but it didn't last too long and the sun came out again later. The day was topped off with a little run and finally I was able to relax... for a very brief period of time before we had to head to dinner.
I guess I should mention that Friday also happened to be my birthday. Now, I don't make a big deal about my birthday. I think in the past ten years I've had a birthday cake twice, maybe. A couple of times I may have literally not seen anybody. Or sometimes I'll meet friends to swim or something and they have no clue, which is fine. Four years ago I did the exact same thing on my birthday, riding the course in Placid when I was up training with friends. The thing is, somehow people always find out. That time it was because my cousin called me to say happy birthday while we were eating lunch and someone heard just enough to be able to figure it out. This time, while my birthday isn't listed on facebook, all it takes is one person to say it and for that person to be friends with a lot of the people who happen to be up at camp with you and the word spreads.
Mostly I wasn't even thinking about it being my birthday. I forgot about it myself most of the time. It was only the second birthday I've had without my dad, and if I skim the calls my cell phone has received I can still see the time he called me on my birthday in 2010. I thought of him a lot when I was up there. He watched me race all seven times and might have loved the town even more than I did. The last time he was there he and my mom were talking about maybe coming up for a winter getaway. It's just too bad they didn't get to do it.
Anyway, upon finishing the run, Courtney was the first one to mention the birthday since she had spent much of the day on social media since she didn't have much to do aside from wait for a lot of tired and thirsty athletes to refuel before moving up the road another twenty miles or so. And then as we were walking to dinner Trent, thanks to having seen my mom and a few other people post on my facebook wall, told my roommates as we walked down to dinner. So, the secret was out. Oh, well. I'm just not the kind of person who wakes up on my birthday and walks around screaming it to the world.
Dinner was up the road at the Dancing Bears, a restaurant at the High Peaks resort. Fajitas never tasted so good. Afterward I was surprised with a birthday, um, bowl of fruit with a candle embedded in the strawberry. Yes, it's QT2. To be honest, having been so stuffed with fajitas I'm not sure I would've been able to handle cake at the time, anyway. I'm also pretty sure that's the first time I've been sung happy birthday since I turned 18.
So then it was time to head back for the general Q&A with the coaches before going back and getting into bed. I think it was difficult to even hold my head up at that point. Oh, but I did get to use our awesome Norma-Tech recovery boots and those felt great. I'd just need a bigger pair for my freakishly long legs. Fortunately, Saturday was a much lower key day. In fact, workouts didn't even start until 9:30. Our standard morning routine was for Mary to get up way before any of us and Marley to bark a bit at her and get all riled up before leaving his spot between me and Tara on the bed to go lie on Mary's pillow next to Jennie. The rest of us would stay in bed until the last possible moment. I am sure I was up pretty late.
First up Saturday was two loops in Mirror Lake. Again, these were long loops so it was more like 5600 yards than 2.4 miles. But I could practically swim all day in that lake, so I had no issues with it and the hour and twenty six minutes didn't feel like it was that long. I did feel exceedingly hungry afterward, though. We had a bit of a break after that where we got some lunch and got to wonder when it was going to rain, because it was definitely going to rain. I had a little bike fitting with Jesse and we moved my saddle forward just a tad, but that was it. There wasn't much reason to change anything else. That's always a good thing.
It was pouring rain and thundering at that point, at which time we were supposed to be doing our ride. I also had two athletes racing the next day who I had to get in touch with so I had to make sure I was available until we finally connected, so that made the afternoon a bit sketchy. I'll be honest and say that I didn't ride. In the grand scheme of things, me missing one recovery bike ride, my strongest sport, five months out from my next A race is probably not a huge deal. So I chose not to worry about it. I got my work done, kept Marley company, had my phone calls, and then went out for the run, which is always the thing I need to spend more time on. Running around Mirror Lake is pretty pleasant.
It's funny though because many times throughout the weekend I also thought of racing there in 2006. There are definitely a lot of vivid memories in my head from that day. The marathon on the out and back, coming to the top of Papa Bear with all of the spectators, seeing my dad when I got off the bike in T2, running out of transition and taking the lead. I really need to figure out how to get somewhere near that again! Not necessarily winning races, just maybe actually having a reliable run again.
Anyway, after that it was once again time to get cleaned up and I got a great deal on a new swimsuit before it was time for my pre-dinner massage. Courtney made me want to cry, but she just casually talks to you while inflicting the pain as you try and pretend you're fine. It was probably a good thing, though. Dinner was some delicious chicken, veggies, salad, sweet potatoes and some other random stuff. And that night was our mental fitness talk. I really, really almost fell asleep during that. Not because it's a bad talk, but simply because I was exhausted! That night we didn't talk much before going to sleep while Tara stayed up working a ton.
Then it was time for the last day. No swim, but easy bike and long run. It was a chilly morning and I opted to run first. I did that because I felt as though I'd be better off surviving the run first rather than trying to get through it as the last thing of the whole weekend. That, and frankly it is not really enjoyable to me to run on the same course at the same time as a whole bunch of people running way, way faster than I am. This leaves me with approximately zero running partners but maybe sometime in the future I'll be able to run with some people again.
But, it was a beautiful, cool, sunny morning in Lake Placid and I could run around the lake a few times without too many people in town, although the lake was crowded with tons of swimmers. There were definitely a lot of camps in town. I finished up in time to pack up my stuff and move out of the room since we had to be out by 11:00 thanks to a horse show.
Once packed and ready I hit the road for my easy ride which was quite nice, especially since I could just ride with some of our runners and chat with everyone. Before we knew it, camp was over and we had some time for lunch before hitting the road. But not before one last little stop at Starbucks with my roommates and Trent who designated himself as an honorary member of room 10 and we parted ways about 3:30. We made it to the ferry with good timing and it was as crowded as I've ever seen it. I actually was worried we wouldn't get on, but thankfully we did. Then just the rest of the super boring ride down 89 and I was home at 8:15. Not too bad.
Somehow I had a hard time sleeping last night, but I did manage to get up this morning to meet some people to swim at Glen Lake. It is definitely not Mirror Lake but at least it was warm and I didn't need my wetsuit and the bacteria levels warning had been lifted. It was a good day for some rest because not long after the swim it started raining and pretty much didn't stop the rest of the day.
So it was an awesome time with some great friends and a good way to kick off the real training for the second half of my 2012 season. I am officially confirmed for Ironman Arizona in November. I recall hating that race, but I do know I can race well there and I know the course and the timing is right, so, there aren't a lot of good reasons not to do it. I'm sure I'll be okay with the fact that the bike course is the most boring on the Ironman circuit as long as I remind myself how fast it is and that the last time I raced there I won my age group by an hour. Not a bad precedent.
Okay, almost time for bed because it's another big training week ahead!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment