What a weekend. I’m kind of tired.
Saturday was Transition Practice day. “Cool,” I thought. “A play-workout.” Well. We dragged all our tri crap gear and our trainers down to the beach at Thetis and set up transition zones. Then: 3 x ( 10′ swim, 10′ bike, 10′ run). The second two were sans wetsuit (which was fine – the lake is benign now), but each effort was to be 5′ hard, 5′ steady. I don’t think I was the only one of the team who was completely thrashed when that was over. I do think we amused some park users, annoyed others.
Quote of the morning: We’re spinning on the trainers, riding our fool heads off going nowhere, sweating freely, and Noa says, “Um, you can take the helmet off now if you want to.”
I had cleverly planned to ride out beyond Sooke after that but decided that would be the height of folly, so opted for a relaxed Peninsula loop. I’m getting into a bad habit of stopping at the Red Barn on the way home, although this time I managed to stick with a banana and a drink instead of last week’s double cone of Moose Tracks.
I had all sorts of plans for being Cultured on Saturday evening. I was going to wander the festivals in the Inner Harbour, take in a play, eat something exotic. Instead, I picked up takeout sushi, sat in the evening sun for a few hours, and went to bed. O Boring Me.
Sunday – The TrainingPeaks assignment said, “Swim 60 minutes. Thetis Lake Swim for MS?” So I figured the 3k race was about an hour and registered. I learned too late that Noa had assumed I’d warm up, race 1.5k, and cool down. Oops. The swim went fine, although I would have been quite happy to get out after the first lap of the lake. The water is now warm enough that my wetsuit was actually uncomfortable in the sun. If I take the distance my Garmin says I swam, 3300m, my pace was pretty good. If I take that 60 minutes and divide it up by the official 3000m course? Well, not so much. I found that whenever I dialed up effort, my navigation went all to pieces, so it was a bit of a zero-sum game.
It was a beautiful day. It was a gorgeous day. All I wanted to do was take a huge nap, but, no. 1:10 of running w/25′ at tempo assigned. I decided to change lakes and went to Elk Lake. It was warm enough that the 25′ of tempo really meant 25′ of elevated heart-rate, as I didn’t seem to speed up noticeably. At the end, all I wanted to do was kick my shoes off and jump back into Beaver Lake.
So I did.
Oh, I’m so glad there is a summer in Victoria, even if it only lasts for a week or two.