FL Camp 2013

Florida Camp 2013 is a wrap. This camp could have alternatively been named "That's What She Said" as that phrase was uttered no less than 500 times throughout the short week. I was usually teeing it up for everyone, but I got the hang of it by the end and had a few good ones. Oh what? You thought I was going to talk about all the training? Ha.

No really, it was a great time with our smallest group yet. Which was actually really fun because the logistics of everything was super easy, whether it was making dinner or heading to the beach for an open water swim. I'm actually going to let Marty give the play-by-play because he said he was going to make a big blog post about the week - I'm holding him to it because his blogs have been few and far between and he took most of the pictures.

Since this is my blog I'll talk about me. Me me me. Isn't that what blogging and triathlon are all about? Just kidding you Type-A-triath-a-geeks, I kid! I kid!

But no, seriously.

Because of job/being a mom/being a wife/second job I have been averaging a stellar 9hrs/week for the past couple of months. This is swim-bike-run-strength hours all together. But in 5.5 days I got in 13 hours! No wonder why I slept 9hrs a night (well, that and also not hearing phantom baby cries during the night).

We once again were down in my neck of the woods of St. Pete, and stayed right across from the beach. We even layed out this year and got lots o'sun on our pale winter faces.  We rode a lot, ran some, and swam in the outdoor pool of my childhood. We also got in some open water swimming where Marty swam sans wetsuit since it was 72 degrees.

It got a little chilly towards the end of the week, but it didn't really stop us from anything. We even rode at Fort DeSoto on Sunday morning even though it was quite windy, and that place is windy on a calm day.

We 'ended' the camp with a road race. It wasn't actually the end of the camp, but close and we all had many miles in our legs so that always makes the end of camp race interesting.  The past several years we did Gasparilla, but since we were going a week later we did the Suncoast Classic. We were all signed up for the 10K, but in a moment of weakness, I switched to the 5K. I just like them better and figured that it would be easier. Of course, it wasn't, but it was shorter.

Race Report time! It was a cool morning (for FL) with a little bit of rain for the start of the 10K which was was 30min prior to the start of the 5K.  Even though the day before we had ridden close to 60 miles and swam, I had a couple of things going for me.

1. It was flat. I haven't run a flat road race since the last time we were in Florida. We just don't have that up here.
2. I had not 1 but 2 slices of Publix cake the night before. There is a rumor about a Publix going up near our house, and if so, I will really need to work on my cake addiction.

So, gun goes off and I ease into my pace as everyone sprints ahead.  I really had no idea how I would feel so figured I would just go with it and try to increase the effort throughout.  My first mile was 6:27 and it felt pretty freaking comfortable so I upped the ante. By this time I had moved into 2nd/3rd with another lady who also started off conservatively. I was told that 1st was 20 seconds up, so she obviously went out much faster. My 2nd mile was 6:00, hmm, possibly upped the ante a little too much. But whatever, only 1 mile left now! I could see 1st place coming back to me, and I could also see she was sporting bunhuggers (or the modern day version of them anyways) and what looked like a real running tank top. As opposed to my t-shirt and heavy trainers (I wasn't packing racing flats for this thing).  The really annoying thing was I had this volunteer on a bike next to me for almost the entire race saying what were supposed to be motivating things, but it got old quick. The kicker was when when she told me that I would hate myself if I didn't catch her.

I figured this girl had a kick, and I knew I wasn't going to, so I tried to pass her a bit before the line, only to have her sprint by the last 50 yards which was a bummer but whatever. I ran a 19:24 and am very happy with that! I felt strong and it was fun.

The End.