WOW! I have to say this year’s training weekend was a lot tougher than last year, but still oh so much fun!!! I stayed in the Club House and bunked with Lauren. We had two rooms and a bathroom to ourselves…good when you are sharing a house with boys The house had all these cool little sign like this one… classic!

Thursday was athlete arrival and a 5K speed workout to kick off the weekend. I almost passed out on my 5K. It has not been hot or sunny for how many weeks??? Yeah, well the sun came out for this workout. Go figure… just our luck

The first night at the house we had PIZZA. Yummy! That was just the begining of the weekend carbo loading. Pretzles, pita chips, bread, cereal… oh so good! I needed to eat enough to get me through 3 miles of swimming, 12 hours of biking, and 4 hours of running. Yup that was the weekend workout hours… i know crazy. Friday’s 7 hour bike turned into 7:25 as we were following Andy. Not sure that was such a good idea. Some young kids threw an open can of beer at us about 7 hrs in. Yeah an open can of Budweiser… real nice kids! I couldn’t believe it. Although VT has some nice roads to ride on, the people did not seem to like the bikers. I thought that was a bit odd.

The 2 mile open water TT wasn’t as bad as last year. I managed to get through with just one head on collision. Goggles were sideways, but fixed them quick and swam on. Good practice for race day. After the big swim was over, it was time to get on the bike for a few hours and then run for a bit. I just wanted to be done so I could get my massage. This year Jim and Catrina from Boston Bodyworker came up to do massages. AWESOME!!! Jim is the best at ironing out the kinks.

SMILE... time to swim!

Sunday came quick. Time for the LONG run to close out the training weekend…aka final phase of overload training. I was ready to go and rock the run. I was off to a good start and feeling great. Paul and I were running together at a pretty decent pace. However, that all changed 3.5 miles in. I felt a weird pain in my right foot. I ran over to the side of the road, took my shoe off and gave it a minute before atempting to head back on the road. Nope not happening… pain was actually worse. My teammates stopped to see what was going on and Pam ended up staying behind to help as she is a PT. She was just as baffled as I was. Thanks Pam for taking care of me

I ended up trying to run for abother mile and then called it quits. Could it have been the rock I steped on at mile 2? I hope not! Well, I knew what I had to do… get in the lake for some water running. Oh the flashbacks from IMAZ training I guess it wouldn’t be IM training without an injury. Positive thoughts only. After the endless pool running, and the team finished their run on land, we called it a weekend and headed home. All in all, a fun filled weekend with the crew. I can’t wait for next year!!! Rumor has it, the weekend won’t be as hardcore as most of us are doing IM Utah. For some reason I am not buying it.

A few days have gone by and I am still out of commission. According to the doc, I may have a stress fracture of the 3rd metatarsal… still in shock. MRI will confirm if IMLP is in or out. The good news… Kona is ON no matter what!

Filed under: Training