And Then There Were Hills....

The Madison Weekend went off just great for Noelle, Cindy and myself. We headed out on Friday to Madison and met up with the training camp crew that evening for some introductions, course talks and logistics for the upcoming two days.

 

Saturday, we got up early and headed out to Fireman's Park to do a 'swim'. It actually was mostly "tips and tricks" from our instructors (of which both had done IM Madison several times and Dwight has done Kona as well....fast cats). In the water we talked about positioning for prior to the canon on race day, sighting, things to practice between now and Sept (bi-lateral breathing for sunshiny mornings when breathing to the East is kind of sucky!), practiced if our goggles get ripped off, and lastly wetsuit stripping! That was kind of fun....at IM you actually don't take off your wetsuits - volunteers do this for you and so we practiced this 'art', which was fun.

After the swim we went back to the hotel and got our bikes for the bike route. Our hotel was in Verona...so we actually biked into Madison (~16 miles) to the Monona Terrace where the bike starts. We biked up the helix (this is the spiral ramp for the parking garage) and then down again before heading out on the route. This was probably worth the camp for me, as these small little nuances (e.g. biking up the helix and down the helix) look really hard or scary - but aren't. And now are off my list of things to worry about come race day.

So, we took off on the bike - 16 miles out to Verona again ("the stick"). Once we got to Verona, we stopped at Brian's parent's house (he was one of the instructors) for refueling and a brief break. Then off to "the loop". This is 40 miles long and done twice in the race - we only did one loop this day. This is where 'the hills' are located. Specifically "the big 4".

Here are my thoughts on "the big 4":

• #1 - hill prior to the high school. Not terribly bad - just long. Doable.
• #2 - this one I personally thought was the worst. Went on FOREVER and you didn't know when it would end because of the curves.
• #3 - a.k.a. 'the bitch' - was bad...but not as bad as #2.
• #4 - pretty bad just due to having done 1-3 prior to this...on race day there will be tons of people here - so should be motivating in that respect.

Average heart-rate for these guys was up in the 170's. Gotta love that. Now, I guess on loop #2, these guys get exponentially worse - so we'll see about that when we go back in August to do the full route. Going down some of these hills was almost as scary - think 40 mph on a 18 lb bike. What would happen if you hit a bump or lost control in this situation? I think Jenny would be a little scraped up. I'm hoping for fair (and DRY) weather come September. Don't want wet roads!

After the loop we ended up back at the hotel (~70 miles total for the day). We got together again for more course talks, run analysis (on video), and logistics for Sunday. Afterwards we had a BBQ at Brian's parent's house again and then headed back to the hotel to sleep.

Sunday, we got up and headed out to Lake Menona for our real 'swim' in front of the terrace. We swam out a little over .5 miles to the bridge and then swam back to the 'swim start'. I felt pretty good and was in the front of the pack (not up by Dwight - Mr. Kona... but pretty close to the front runners). After the swim, we got our wetsuits 'stripped' again and then we had to practice running up the helix like we would on race day to our T1 room. After walking through T1 logistics we went back to our cars and changed for our run.

The run was going to be 1 loop of the run course (13.1 miles). I was a bit concerned regarding my lame leg (calf) how this was going to fare, but was going to give 'er a shot. I ran with our group out about 3 miles into the course and decided that before I got too far into the course, I should probably turn back and ensure I didn't hurt myself any more than I am. So, I got about a 10K in for the day (which was better than last week's weekend milage with this thing).

Noelle and Cindy went on and were going to stay an extra day to get some more biking in - so I headed to the hotel, packed up my things, and headed home (some of us have to work on Monday!). All-in-all - the weekend was fun. I feel I have less to worry about come race day, than I did. Don't get me wrong...there will be plenty that I will find to worry about - but some of the small things we covered should not be on that list.