Training Camp Day 1

I'm tuckered. It was an absolutely marvelous day in Las Cruces! We started the day by heading to the 50 meter outdoor pool at 8am. I got to share the lane with a Jacqui, who is a very sweet pro-triathlete. We pounded out 4500 meters in about an hour and half. I kept up with her quite well for the first half, and then she started kicking my boot-ay. Our set looked like this:

800 warm up

200 (50 just left arm, 50 right arm, repeat)

200 (3 strokes left, 5 strokes normal, 3 strokes right)

200 (single arm 50, swim 50)

Main set

500, 400,300,200,100

twice

20 seconds rest quickly turned into 5 for me as I tried to keep up with Jacqui. I swear that damn pool got longer and longer as the set progressed. One day I'll catch the jerks that are responsible for that. It was tough, but wonderful to be swimming long course again.

We then went back to Paulo's and regrouped for our 2 hour ride. I ate cookies and a cliff bar (my nutrition is top notch, let me tell you) threw on my sleeveless tri-top- Yes, SLEEVELESS! It is that warm here. And we were off.

Paulo was nice enough to ride with me as I was quickly dropped by everyone in the first 30 minutes of riding into the New Mexico wind. I'm pretty sure that both my tires were flat. Yeah, that's it.... But when we turned around with the wind at our backs, the tires magically re-inflated to 120. It was a rare miracle of cycling... My new bike feels SO wonderful on the road. So yes, it not only looks HOT, it also rides well. Of course, next to Jonny's hot pink bike, Mike Honcho looks rather vanilla. I can't believe how comfy it is in the aero position, though. Paulo actually gave me a little grief for spending TOO much time aero. We came back into town a bit early because of the tailwind on the way back. We ended up averaging about 18.5 mph, which is A-OK for me for the first ride out this year :-)

Then it was veg-out time where I ate as much as I could stuff in my face (more cookies and leftover tacos... again, my nutrition is friggin awesome) for an hour and then laid around like a zombie until 3:00pm when the girls came over to visit. And then it was time for our run clinic.

Paulo gave a nice talk about improving our running and the important things to keep in mind when out on our runs this week, and forever more. It was very interesting and helpful. Thankfully, my roommate Judy came in in time for the run because we are perfect running buddies. Yeah, like I'm going to run with Jonny whose Zone 2 pace is 6:40 miles. Uh huh.

We headed out on a 50 minute run into the Las Cruces trails. Have I mentioned we're at altitude? No? Well, we're at about 4000 feet and you can definitely feel it. Well, if you're anemic you can. It's not that bad, you just feel winded at a slower pace than normal. I'm hoping that this might help out my anemia by increasing my Epo production a bit. We'll see. It's a little too low to have a real effect. But when I'm draggin ass through my 4 hour ride tomorrow I can blame it on the altitude. Man, if this was at sea level, I'm sure I could hold 20mph!

When we got back from the 50 minutes, we did 8 strides at a fast pace while Paulo critiqued our form. That was nice. I get so tired of running slow all the time that just to run fast for 100 yards or less is a nice change of pace (pun wasn't intended...). Of course, fast is all relative when you're a snail like me.

After the run it was time to get ready for our group dinner. It was italian, which I love, but since it was buffet style and everything had dairy in it, so lactose intolerant me had to order pasta with red sauce. I am apparently not evolved enough to handle lactose. Maybe 1000 more years of evolution will help out my germline. Thankfully there were 4 of us, so it wasn't just me being a pain. Here are some pics from dinner

Judy and I

Jonny Showing Coach Paulo how much he loves him

SmartassCoach himself

Group Photos!

More tomorrow if I can prop my eyes open to blog after our 4 hour ride/ 45 minute run/ 1.5 hour swim...

Wish me luck...

:-)