Day 1 Tucson

Hey blog friends...

Now that I'm rested and not quite so delirious I can update on day 1/2 here in Tucson.  

First and foremost, the girls here are amazing.  We are all on the same page....with respect to how hard we like to train.  Are we on the same page ability/fitness-wise?  Well, not so much, but I'm 100% okay with that.  A lot of these girls are pro's, Kona podium-ers and/or Olympians but I prepared myself for that coming in.  They are all so nice and I'm so happy to be here with them!

Yesterday was an amazing day.  We started at the perfect time....7:30 am at the pool!!  4300 yards later, we all checked off the first swim session of camp.  Cliff English is leading camp and he is an amazingly cool, and super nice guy....not to mention one of the best, if not the best, coaches in the country!  What a treat.

We met later that morning for our trek to Mt. Lemmon, which is a +/- 5,000 foot climb starting at about 3,000 feet above sea level.  The climb is 25 miles and is, with the exception of about 2 miles total, straight up hill.  Yes, you get the climb the 2 downhill miles on the way back down so its 25 miles of climbing all together.  That's a lot, FYI.

This is Mt. Lemmon from a distance...

Yep...we did it!! 

The ride was amazing.  The ride was HARD.  The altitude really really got to me, much more than anyone else unfortunately.  My legs felt great the whole climb but I literally could NOT breath!  (or maybe I'm just really out of shape?)  The hardest part of the ride for me was mile 8-14 with the whole "not almost done but still starting to feel the burn" feeling.  We took a nice little break at mile 14, refueled quickly, and headed back up!

View from mile 14 - kinda blurry.  

Nonetheless, 2 hours and 25 minutes later, we arrived at The Cookie House and treated ourselves to one of these (though I refrained and split mine with Cliff).

Half Brownie Half Peanut Butter amazing cookie....

So day 1 was a huge success...I wish I had felt better on the climb up Lemmon but I did it and I'm proud of that!

We tucked in about 8:30 to prepare for day 2.  Day 2 included....drumroll....swimming, biking and running!  Shocking right?!!

Blog for day 2 to be updated as soon as I can....