Windy, hot and humid

That was today's forecast. A beautiful sunny day although very strong wind and very humid. If IMLP were today, there would have been a lot of carnage. The issue with the strong wind, especially blowing down 86 in your face on the return trip to LP, is that you are working hard and don't realize the humidity.

We all rolled out on our bikes between 6 and 7am. Those racing LP (Pam, Margit, Jay) were doing the 112 mile course. Most of the others were doing the course minus the out and back loops (84 miles) and the remaining athletes were covering a full loop of the course plus a bit more.

I rolled out with Brad and Mike Mariano (3 Mikes here) and the camera crew. We are filming for my dvd/download series and it's a bit bizarre. Mike was feeling tired and on the third hard, big day of camp, it's important to stay within yourself early on and loosen up, so he dropped back. Brad and I rode down 73 together and when we turned left on 9, the film crew wanted to get some head on shots so I rode behind the minivan with a camera man in the back - what great motorpacing! I rode the rt 9 section at 35 mph.

I hooked up with Ange, Trephina and Mary on the out and back and rode a bit with them before finding Margit, Kenny and Pam. We rode up 86 to LP and I did some more footage riding on the run course along the river, then headed back down 86, where I ran into Jay and rode with him for a bit, then headed back down 86 and rode Juergens back into LP. I put in a solid 5 hrs 30 min on the bike and surprisingly felt really solid! I say surprisingly because I've worked really hard this week on little sleep and was feeling spent when I awoke this morning.

We did a transition run, grabbed a few slices of pizza, and then headed down 86 via car to soak our tired legs in the gorge. We then sat in the shade and I reminded everyone of what they accomplished thus far at this camp. I mentioned how in our minds, we are only as good as our present training session, yet you need to take into account everything that we did over the past three days.

Today was a great day. We all hung out there in the shade in that glazed over hazy dumbness that proceeds a big training day. Later, we had a great dinner next door to our hotel at Nicoli's and Ange and I passed out some more mvp awards (Cat, Jay, Jason, Jeff), then hit Ben and Jerrys.

Sorry I haven't been that interesting with the blogs this week - I'm spent and trying to keep everyone updated on what we are doing here. We've done so much more than I've mentioned thus far in terms of personal accomplishments and I'll write a summary in a few days when I've had some time to decompress and get some sleep but for right now, this is what I've got.

Cheers,

EH