Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club.
Oh, wrong camp.
The first rule at all my camps is: no whining.
Not that I'm a hard ass or some tough guy. I just explain that whining gets you no where. When you are out on a ride and it raining and cold and you are miserable, the person next to you is miserable as well. There's no need to voice how miserable you are. My buddy Farber, The Mexican, knows this rule well. He never bitches. We have ridden in some nasty awful conditions and we just get quiet and ride. Because, when it comes right down to it, what are your options?
This camp started with a ride. As we stood in the parking area, discussing the details of the ride, it began to piss on us. This didn't stop through the whole ride. The group didn't bitch at all. Well, Annmarie did for a bit, but I cut her slack because she's honest and her Italian emotion is hard to keep bottled up. Plus, she's tough as nails and I didnt want her to beat the crap out of me.
Even with the rain, the ride was still beautiful. We did a few long gradual climbs and then I had the group do some hill repeats up Music Mountain road. I planted a water bottle and they had to do three repeats to the water bottle up the road, the first at a higher cadence seated, the second at a low cadence seated, and the third standing the whole time. I then moved the bottle back further and had them repeat this sequence of three. Finally, they did it once more with the bottle even further up the road. We ended up riding three hours total.
After a hot shower and some homemade warm chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies, we did the short drive over to the parking area for the Appalachian Trail and headed up. The trail from where we ran winds up hill for over 30 minutes and you reach a peak on a ridge that looks out over Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts. It's an amazing lookout and an amazing run.
The day finished with a nice dinner, a glass or two of wine, and a solid, fun day one. Sue got the mvp award for the day. This is her first camp, and she has yet to even do a triathlon! She was smiling most of the day, albeit nervous, and she performed unbelievably well. I could tell she will fit in great and her first tri is going to be a breeze. She's due to post something on my homepage now.
Until later...
Cheers,
EH
2 comments:
If you don't like whining you need to get a "Bitch Jersey". Usually a white XXXL cotton t-shirt adorned with various unflattering jiffy markered slogans. Whoever is last to bitch wears the jersey.... and it only needs to be the tiniest bit negative..... Would really suck to bitch right before a three hour ride....
I like that idea MJ! I may have to do this for the Lake Placid Camp.
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