Day One

Last night after eating and showering, Anthony, Brutus, and I headed to bed.  We read for a bit and then lights out.  Honestly, I'm not even sure what time that was, perhaps 9:30-10pm.  We both woke up around 6:15 - it was nice to wake up naturally with no alarm feeling refreshed.

We had some coffee, hydrated, and ate breakfast as we chatted about how we were going to attack the day.  My schedule called for a morning swim and an afternoon ride.  Unfortunately, since it's Sunday, the pool did not open until 10am.  Looking at the weather, the winds were supposed to pick up to 20mph starting around 11am.  With those two pieces of information, I just figured the universe was telling me to ride in the morning and swim in the afternoon.  

Anthony lubed our chains after the long drive and made sure everything was ready to go on both bikes while I played with Brutus.  Brutus has made himself right at home at our homestay. :) 

By the time the bikes were ready to go, the sun was out and it was the PERFECT temperature for a ride, so we happily rolled out.  About 20-25minutes in to the ride, I could no longer shift between my small and big chain ring and I was stuck on the small chain ring.... turns out my di2 battery was low and needed to be charged.  Bummer, since we knew the wind was going to be bad for a ride later in the day with the wind.  This was my fault - I had "charge di2" on my list of "to-dos" before we left Colorado, but once I saw that Anthony had packed the charger, I assumed that he had also charged the bikes...assumptions are never a good thing. Ah well. 

So, we headed back to the house, plugged my di2 battery into the charger, got a small snack (banana with PB - 2nd banana of the day - and a choc chip cookie for me), changed/gathered our swim gear, and headed to the pool.  We both had a great swim - 3200yds for me and 3400yds for Anthony (and he still finished a few minutes before me!)  It was super nice to swim short course yards instead of short course meters and I felt strong, smooth, and steady in the water.  We both sipped on sports drink throughout the swim and split a CLIF bar on the drive back to the house.  

My workout:

WU: 500 mix of strokes
Pre-Set:
Snorkel, strap, buoy
150, 125, 100, 75, 50, 50 75, 100, 125, 100 smooth build as you through the intervals to finish at 85%
All 15 sec rest
Recover before MS. Get your mind ready!
MS:
4 rounds of:
100 smooth swim at 80% 3 sec rest
100 moderate effort at 85 to 90% 3 sec rest
100 strong effort, fast swim at 95% 20 sec rest
Stick to the rest cycles. Enjoy that 20 sec "full" rest before repeating.
Additional set:
500 smooth swim with buoy.

Note: I am by no means a "fast" swimmer (fast is all relative anyways, right?) But, I love reflecting back on swimming even just 6 months ago, but more so when training for IM Lake Placid, if I broke 2:00/100yd as an average pace for a workout, it was a good day and for IM Boulder if I broke 1:55-1:50/100yd average it was a good day.  Making the effort to be in the pool 4x per week since November has really paid off. I love swimming, I'm getting faster and feeling stronger and smoother every day. 

After our swim, we had a good lunch on the patio outside and then lounged in the lounge chairs for a bit while chatting with Charlie as he took a break from his yard work - our host is one hard worker.  Anthony also helped Charlie with a small task in the yard that needed a bit extra muscle.  As we let our lunch digest, the wind picked up more and more.  Brutus enjoyed laying in the yard with the wind in his face making his ears flop - happy dog. 

With the winds being so strong and our rides both being just nice, fairly easy/low key endurance rides to "warm-up" for the next few days of camp, we opted to take a short ride from the house to hop on a nice path instead of being on the roads with cars while there were 20-30mph gusts.  The path seemed to protect us a little bit from the wind and felt much safer... for the short duration we were on the roads getting to the trail the winds were pretty awful and deafening. The path was pretty flat which was really nice in addition to the extra oxygen :) I was glad that we opted to ride on the path and pleased that it wasn't very crowded at all. 

Total riding time for the day was about 2.5 hours.  After the ride, I stretched, had a bowl of cereal, played fetch with Brutus for a bit and then showered and started working on dinner.  Today was the perfect warm up for the next 4 days! 

For dinner, I made a quinoa, veggie, and chickpea salad and Anthony and Charlie grilled up some chicken.  Brutus helped with the fire wood for the "grill" and then got cozy next to the pool and watched the guys grill.  

While the boys grilled, I took in the views and cleaned up a bit in the kitchen.  After dinner I did some light foam rolling and now I am just relaxing and hydrating until we are ready for bed.  Despite the few curve balls, today was a great first day of camp and I'm looking forward to the rest of the week!