Training Camp Day 7

The day started off with a long bike ride. The plan was to ride out to Snow Canyon, complete some hill reps and then loop back to the condos. The spin out to the hill felt good - I positioned myself near the front of the pack so I wouldn’t have to deal with being yo-yo’d (so much nicer). We were told to do two reps of the hill in a relatively low gear to really focus on building strength. The hill was about twenty minutes long. On the first rep I started off in a pack with Charlotte, Soph, Sara and Julianne. At twelve minutes I hit a wall. My legs had virtually no power and I was struggling. There was almost no wind and the heat was starting to kill me - all I could think about was how hot my skin felt. I went through an entire bottle of water and electrolytes. The climb became steeper as you got to the top - my cadence was low and my bike was swerving. It was probably one of the ugliest looking climbs I’ve ever done. I was so relieved to turn around at the top and speed down. Descending was super fun - the turns weren’t super sharp so you were able to pick up quite a bit of speed safely. As soon as I got to the bottom I joined back up with my pack to climb up a second time. The second time around was much better - physically my legs still felt like garbage but mentally I was better prepared. I began to really struggle again at the twelve minute mark (my skin was burning) but trudged on to the top. We descended down about halfway where me met up with Coach Lisa. She had us do four more climbs (around one to two minutes) where we practiced standing. My standing skills have improved so much from last season. After this we biked easy down the rest of the hill (Emma aka my personal photographer snapped some sweet pics) and headed to a cafe. I bought a frappe and cookie. The cafe was in the middle of an artsy gallery/shop centre so we did a bit of exploring as we cooled off. The ride back to the condos was super chill. I was a little sad when we finished - I would have loved to have continued biking for the rest of the day. I did a couple loops around the condos to make it an even 70km ride.

We ate a quick lunch and headed over to the pool for a recovery swim.

500 easy, 500 kick, 500 gomez drill, 500 fartlek, 500 easy

My body felt alright in the water until I attempted to pick up the pace in the fartlek. I ended up leading the lane for the entire workout and could have really used someone to draft off of at this point. The pool had a weird current and I was struggling to not get pushed around.

We spent the night out in the town. St. George is such a cute city - it kind of reminds me of Red Deer (based on it’s size and amount of churches). It seems like a really clean place as well (perks of not having snow?). We went to a Thai restaurant for dinner - it was my first time having Thai food and now I am obsessed. Afterwards we walked around the Ironman expo and grabbed some coconut ice-cream at a really cute shop.

We got back to the condos around 8pm and packed up our bikes. This was my first time attempting to pack up my bike solo (I managed to convince Cody to help me before the trip in exchange for dinner). I was able to to do it completely by myself with zero problems! Success! I felt like a mechanic after - I officially don’t need a man now and am an indepent woman (just kidding my bike mechanic skills are still sub par).

Ella, Olivia, Emma and I had a super chill girls night spent foam rolling and went to bed early.