I know all (4 of you) have been waiting on the edge of your seat for rest of this exciting telling of training camp …. So there a few of us were, finally at Ward. While we were waiting to see if others would catch up, Katie suggested another athlete, Chris, and I do some extra climbing to this lake. It was apparently beautiful and totally worth it. Next lie: we were told it was about 1.5 miles and should take 15 minutes. In all fairness they weren't lying on purpose. Despite being tired I was up for the challenge. Chris rode ahead and I trekked up the road myself. 15 minutes went by… 20 minutes went by… and finally 2.8 miles later I reached some gate and a visitor’s center. I asked someone how far to the lake and they told me about 2 miles up. Are you kidding me?! Nope. Just no. Done. So done. Chris was obviously still on his way up but I didn’t care so I turned around and started the ride back. Luckily was mostly downhill at that point but I will still going downhill. I had the two short climbs left and during those was when I was hitting bottom. I was so tired and the caffeine I had in my bottles hadn’t kicked in yet. And of course it was at that point Katie and Wes pulled up next to me and I’m not entirely sure what I said but it was mostly noises and “uh huhs” at which point they quickly left me.
Luckily by the time I reached the main descent my caffeine
kicked in and I was starting to feel better. This is when the fun started
again. I really like descending and it’s a skill I’ve been working on. I hit 43
mph which I think is a new high for me. The descent really was a blast. Even
when it started raining I was still having fun. After the descent I managed to
catch up to rest of the group that didn’t do the extra climb. After sitting
behind them for a minute getting splattered with mud from the wet roads, I
decided I just wanted to be done so I went to the front and pulled the group
back. It was a tough ride but I really did enjoy it even when I was feeling
low. I would love to do it again sometime. I broke a few of my records on that
ride… most elevation gain (6000ft), longest distance (78 miles) and longest
time (5.5 hours). Because of the weather we scrapped the swim and got to eat,
drink and relax rest of the night.
Come Sunday we were all feeling pretty beat up and tired.
We kept joking how difficult going up stairs felt. Yet we had lots of hard work
to do that morning. We started with a ride which included 3x15 minute TT
efforts up Nelson Road. We were told to give our very best, don’t worry about
numbers, go for broke. If I was riding behind someone my goal was to catch them
and maybe pass them. On the last one suddenly Chris passed me and a second
later I hear Katie yelling “CATCH HIM!”. There was a lot more yelling behind me
from her about not letting him go, make him work for it, really dig, is that
your best. And you know what? All that yelling really made me dig a bit deeper.
I often wonder how much more I can really push myself during max efforts. How
deep can I dig into the pain cave? I know I can go deeper. I’m pretty sure if I
did my power test on the road either trying to catch Katie’s ass or having her
barking at me from behind, my numbers would be higher. I know I respond well
when people yell at me to push harder and keep going. Except when my husband
does it I laugh because apparently I don’t take him seriously. Unfortunately I
cannot depend on other people to make myself push harder. I have to learn to do
it on my own. Maybe I could have pushed harder during those TT efforts, maybe
not. I don’t know but I was happy with the effort I was able to do at the time.
Afterwards we got to run off the bike. Unfortunately this
wasn’t an easy run off the bike. We did an easy jog to the track for mile
repeats. Since I’m still dealing with injury issues I was allowed to do half
mile repeats. The only rule was we couldn’t go slower than our first one. At
this point we were all exhausted and this was a real challenge. Our legs felt
like they were going to give out. We were hitting walls and couldn’t ask any
more of our legs. Since I did half the track workout essentially I was able to
go a bit faster each time. What I really learned was not from doing my own
work, but watching the others do their work. I watched them struggle and fight
against the fatigue. It was truly inspiring to watch them put it all out there.
Afterwards we got to do an easy swim which felt good. Then it was Katie’s for
more drinking and eating!
Monday morning we did the Bolder Boulder 10K. I debated a
lot about signing up for it because I knew trying to run over 6 miles when I’ve
been running/walking 2 miles at a time was a horrible idea. I signed up anyway
against my better judgment mostly because I knew it would be a fun race where
we wouldn’t give a shit about our time. It certainly started out as the most
fun I’d ever had a race. We paid no attention to pace and stopped at everything
interesting thing along the way. This included trampoline, jell-o shots,
dancing with cows and belly dancers, peeing against some random guys house (we
asked), eating Doritos and cupcakes. I was having fun but unfortunately
my body had enough and was started to give out. After about a mile my knee
started hurting. And then it got worse. And then my foot started hurting. After
3 miles I decided to stay behind and walk rest of it. It took me 1 hour 27ish
minutes to do a 10K.
Afterwards there was a lot of walking which turned to
limping and pretty much everything on my left side was hurting and just done.
After all that I got to hang out at the airport for a few hours, have a delayed
flight due to weather, miss my layover in Atlanta, rent a car to drive 2.5
hours and get home at 2:30AM. Needless to say, my body was pretty pissed off at
me at that point. It’s doing better now though.
Overall, the trip was awesome! I had such a fun time
during all the training (mostly) and had a great time with my team and coach.
Katie did a great job putting together an awesome camp and I was sad it was
over. I’d move to Boulder in a hot second if I could. The views are gorgeous
and I love the atmosphere. It’s not very often you go to a place and think “I
belong here”. I was amazed at how there were cyclists EVERYWHERE. So many of the
roads have bike lanes or shoulders. There were even cyclists on the highway. I
can’t wait until I get to go back there again although I have no plans as of
now. Until next time Boulder!
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