Tucson with JHC

Wow. Tucson. Where to begin?
Heading into camp I was pretty tired. Still not recovered from my little vacation and picking up some sort of flu along the way was not helping. BUT I was determined to have a good time and get some good training in.

I arrived in TUC about noon and had agreed to hitch a ride to the house with another camper who I had never met before. Sharon from Chicago. I knew driving in with her when she told me the story about her husband calling and asking “is the cat dead yet” we would get along just fine. And we did. So we get to the house – (jen and Jerome made a steller move and got us all a huge house at the base of lemmon this year instead of the hotel last time.. kudos coaches!). so we get there and run around the place like idiots checking out all the rooms.. “wow you could have a disco in the laundry room”… “have you seen the giant master with the purple velvet duvet”…. “why is there a short Japanese woman in the foyer?”….Good stuff. Anyway Sharon agreed to room with me (probably a big mistake) and immediately we agreed that there would be no rules and we planned to live out of our suitcases and whatever spilled over to the floor. (we lived up to that as Jerome put it.. ‘wow it’s a disaster in there’… thanks..)- though I would regret her laying claim to the one blanket in the closet… Egor (he was on the blanket) became a source of contention for the rest of the week! so day one was really just putting bikes together and catching up. As the day went on the other campers (there were 12 total) began arriving from all over the country. Pretty cool to meet some amazing athletes. We sat down to a (non home cooked by jen) meal and talked about the days to come. Still on east coast time, most of us crashed out pretty early.. well that and we knew we had a monster climb the next day.

First day – climb lemmon. I was trying out some new pre race stuff – it kind of looked and tasted a bit like pollen…. But I sucked it down anyway with the requisite oatmeal and Gatorade. Everyone was a bit nervous and excited and trying to remember names! i had brought my road bike (and was glad i did!) but hadnt ridden it in a while so was still getting used to being in a much different postion than my TT. but i love my six13. love it.

We started out with an easy 5 mile spin to the bottom and then the fun started. There was a little break and discussion of heart rates and clothing options but we got right down to it and started the 26 mile climb –going up from about 2.5k to about 9 k ft elevation. Slow and steady all the way up.

At some points you feel good, like you could go on forever, other times you are questioning your sanity and saying to yourself “am I really geared out.. really?”. We split off into a few little packs and rode our way up to windy point at mile 14.

I was pretty happy to get a break off the bike and to meet marco from recovery socks (love those!) who had brought bars and gatorade. Had my first chocolate/peanut butter power bar. NICE. Will be adding that to my staple diet, that sucker was good. so we refilled and refueled and got back on the road. Toward the top the road has a series of short descents --I was riding with Rich down one and a trio of pros rolled by us he yells ‘that’s Hillary!” as in hillary Biscaye. Super pro. So that was cool. We also saw chris mcdonald and a few others. So we get to the top – and chill out for a bit. we had some really strong climbers in the group and im amazed - julia, ange, mary all hammered up from windy point. awesome! I knew I wanted to start down quickly since one of my major weaknesses is descending. I’m terrible at it. still have a lot of fear and just am not aggressive. So I knew this was a good opportunity to face those issues and tackle lemmon both ways. Long (ride) and story short.. I had a great trip down. Barely touched the breaks and peddled thru a lot of the turns. Was pretty happy with that. I think it helped we had some great weather that day and a bit of a head wind going down. After a short ride back to the house I headed out on the T run with Julia. It was HOT. And DRY. But we managed a pretty decent pace so success on day one. After the other riders trickled in we compared war stories and the showered up and headed to Blanco.. super fantastic Mexican where I think 90% of us had the fish tacos. Love them. Oh that and about 4 bowls of guac. It’s funny to see everyone all cleaned up, hair down and real clothes. I swear, people are completely unrecognizable! Too funny. Afterwards, we had a little gathering around the TV for some march madness and some yummy cupcakes.


Day 2 started with an early morning call to the pool. My worst nightmare I tell you. Being cold and swimming. Barf. So we all get to the pool and jen announces the water is 82. Score! Granted it kind of sucks to swim in cause you cant go too fast, but I will take that over being cold, the air temp was about 45 or so. Jen split us into lanes and Jerome was on deck to give us the workout. I really like this way of swimming – getting only a bit of the work out at a time – much less daunting and you don’t have time to think about all the sets that are coming up. Jerome gave me some good feedback on my head position when I breathe and we had a nice little workout. Sometimes a bit too much chatting at the wall and perhaps the evil eye from jen.. but we got it done. After a shower (with a spicket head that was about 3 feet off the ground.. WTF?) we headed to La Buzz for a pick me up and a bit of food and rest. Then off to Sabino canyon for a long run. Instead of the paved trail that goes up thru the middle of the canyon jen tells us we are running telephone line trail. Basically a super technical trail that goes straight up the side of the mountain and keeps climbing. Its full of rocks and well boulders actually and you have to bound pretty much most of the way to get up and over some of these things. I had a great day out there though. Ever since my trail race in jan (single track through one of the NC parks where i ended up falling into a steep ravine cause i am clumsy..) I’ve not been too keen on the off road stuff.. but Jerome kind of took off and I found the mojo to follow. He and I ran almost all of the trail out and back.. for a total of about 13 miles? I don’t know how I managed some of those parts without falling flat on my face or careening over the edge…. But it was a good day and we had a pretty good clip going. on our way back down we passed everyone and jen yells "stay on his ass" and i did. when we got to the bottom there was a stream that had flooded over the bridge. jerome says "wow that looks good". it wasnt 4 seconds later that my shoes were off and i was in! it was cold and felt fantastic! the day was made even better with a late afternoon stint by the pool (at the house, no, not more swimming!).

**disclaimer. yes i stole photos to post on this. thanks to ange and kate for letting me, even though i didnt ask.

rest of camp to come. i suppose i should do some work today.