I've been a busy boy.
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Early last month I headed over to London for a long weekend to visit my high-school friend Grant and take in the first few stages of the Tour de France (back when it wasn't a giant mess). I flew into London on Friday morning and we saw the Prologue (a short time trial that kicks off the race) on Saturday, and followed Stage 1 around SE England on Sunday.
London's a great town and I had a good time checking it out when Grant was working, etc. I did a couple of long runs while I was over there, once again the Garmin GPS saved my butt in terms of finding where I started from. Grant lives near Hampstead Heath and I did a long run all the way down to Buckingham Palace and back. I didn't bring any fluids, cals, or money (which was dumb) and on the way back I started getting a little "bonky" which made navigating that much more difficult. Without the GPS I'd still be wandering around London. Unlike Moscow, people run frequently in London so I didn't feel so out-of-place. The weather was perfect for the whole trip and on another day I was able to check out the Cabinet War Rooms from which Churchill, et. al. ran the war effort. Pretty cool stuff.
The number of people that turned out to see the Tour in London was staggering. I swung by the opening ceremonies on Friday night at Trefalgar Square and was able to get a peek-a-boo view from way across the street. The ceremony was kind of goofy, including having each of the teams ride their bikes up on stage and then have their team leader respond to some lame questions from the MC before riding off stage again. Most of the talk was in broken English (actually, who got interviewed seemed to be a function of who spoke the best English on the team), and was very Shaq-esque. "Uh, yeah, we're going to stay focused and take each stage at a time and do our best to take advantage of our strengths." You don't say?
Saturday's prologue had each rider going at 60 second intervals, all 189 of them, and was scheulded to have the first rider go off around 3. Grant and I got down there around 11 and figured it would be easy to find a spot on the rail. Not so. The course started near Buckhingham Palace and wound around Hyde Park before heading back to where it started, 7K in total. By noon, basically around the entire course, people were standing 2 and 3 deep along the rail. We finally got a spot off the Serpentine Lake, and were able to see all the riders come through. Even for a pro-cycling geek like me, it did get a little monotionous in the middle. The big names were all at the end. The guy who won, Fabian Cancellara, was second to last but even going by us it was visibly obvious he was going faster than everyone else. He averaged almost 33 mph around that course. That's incredible.
The next morning we caught the beginning of Stage 1 [I've got pictures, just not handy] right in front of St. Pauls Cathedral which was a great backdrop. From there we ran back to the car and headed south through Maidstone down to Goudhurst, where the last "climb" of the day was. This was a tiny town in the middle of Kent - about 60 miles SE of London - and even they had a huge crowd for the Tour. Lots of vendors selling burgers and beer, and we had plenty of time to have a bite before the race came through. From there we again sprinted to Canterbury to see the finish. Unfortunately, we lacked a good map and had to guess where the race was going to come through Canterbury and we just barely caught the riders flashing by near the 1K to go sign. But it was a noble effort and we talked about how fun it would be to follow the Tour for a longer time in France. Oh, wait, I've done that. Yup, good times.
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Two days after London, I headed to Palm Springs for Training Camp with the Counterpart Coaching (CpC) folks. CpC is run by a great coach/athlete named Mitch Gold who is a good friend of my coach, Scott, who is also part of the business. Scott was down at camp for a few days. Mitch has been battling an upper spine issue that made camp a challenge for him to pull off, so Scott came down to lend a hand. Was good to have him there for a bit.
The CpC camps are low-frills camps that are designed to give you a major training dose in a focused environment. In this case, it was timed for working towards Ironman Canada (or Louisville or Wisconsine actually). The campers stay in a Motel near Mitch's house and we do many of our meals there. It was great to kick back and watch the Tour at the end of a long training day, and Mitch's wife is a great cook. But it was crazy-hot in Yucca/Palm Springs so this camp had a few days in Big Bear, and a few days in San Diego on the schedule.
Camp is great for two reasons. First, you pack in a silly amount of training into a little more than a week. Second, you get to hang out with other Iron-geeks through a unique experience. The group was a lot of fun and everyone got along very well, minus some heat/fatigue induced crankiness.
Over the course of 8 days, I did:
- 37.5 hours of training
- ~425 miles on the bike, with a whopping total of over 31,000 vertical feet of climbing
- ~30 miles running (about normal)
- Several very challenging pool workouts
- Less sleeping than I should have
Our longest day was an 8-hour (saddle time) ride from Lucerne (elevation ~1100ft) up to Big Bear (elevation 6700ft), over the ski-summit (7100ft), back down to San Bernidino (elevation 1500ft), back up over the Rim of the World (elevation 6500 ft), back over the ski summit (7100ft), then down and back up to Big Bear. 107 miles, 10 hours total time, 12,500 vertical feet, one very tired dude. All of this was on my tri-bike, by the way. The day prior we'd done about 7,500 ft and 75 miles up to Idylwild/Pine Cove. It was very hot this day and it was very hard to take in calories - your stomach just doesn't let you do it. We ran for 30 minutes after this ride as well, and had swam for about 90 minutes before hand. That's a long day. So on the big ride, I switched to turkey sandwiches at each stop which worked out much better. One more sticky-sweet gel pack and I'd have exploded.
We finished the trip with a trip to San Diego with a stop at the Oakley factory. It was too bad we only had one night there (actually Encenitas), cause it was nice to be by the ocean. On Saturday we did a weekly ride called the Swami Ride, followed by a 90 minute run along the water that wrapped up camp for us. Mitch had the van parked near Moonlight Beach and turning the corner from that run and gliding down to the van was a great feeling realizing all the training that we'd done that week, it felt a little like finishing an Ironman. Just a little.
I was really stunned by how good I felt for most of the camp. My legs were cooked so I didn't have a lot of pop on the bike, and my HR didn't want to elevate (sign of fatigue) but other than that it wasn't too bad. I'm just waiting to see what kind of a fitness bump I get out of it, hopefully I'll get a peek on Sunday. Like an Ironman, I felt really tired for the few days after I got back. The toughest part was the sleeping. We had plenty of time to sleep, but I found it difficult in a bed that wasn't my own, combined with the heat, the altitude, and the training stress. It got better as the week went on but I think I only got 8 hours once.
The real take away was some of the friends I've made. I can't wait to see how everyone does at their upcoming races, many of which will also be at IMC which will make it more fun as well.
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This weekend, I'm headed to Spokane to do the Troika Half-Ironman as a warm-up race for Canada. I haven't raced since Arizona, which is amazing, so in some ways I have no idea where my fitness is at. I rarely push into the "red" in training so I'm totally not sure what's going to happen when I let it fly a bit. I'm not that concered with Troika as a race - it's mostly a training day - but a good result will give me some confidence headed into Canada, which is three weeks after. I'd like to go fast, and I may experiment a bit as well. If something goes wrong, I think I'll be happy to have it happen there instead of up in Penticton. It's amazing what a looming goal a 1/2 IM was just a year ago and now it's barely a second thought.
Given that I grew up in Spokane, I've wanted to do this race for a long time. The bike and run are on roads that were well-trodden in my youth, which will be an added benefit. The weather looks like it's going to be good and I'm looking forward to having a good day out there. It's also a shakedown cruise - I finally decided to pull the trigger and upgrade TT bike, but I'll save that for later.