I arrived in beautiful Victoria, BC, Canada on Monday after a long day of travel. I flew from LaGuardia to Denver, then Denver to Vancouver. After a long line to get through customs, I got my bike and bags and hopped on the Pacific Coach Lines bus, which would take me to downtown Victoria via the ferry. The ferry ride from Vancouver to Victoria is about 90 minutes and is a beautiful ride. Once in Victoria, it was another 45 minutes to downtown Victoria. I had a short wait, and then Simon picked me up in his snappy new Honda Fit, which replaced the much-loved Toyota Tacoma that served us so well during our February training camp in Flagstaff, AZ.
Then it was off to Simon’s house, which is in a wonderful location, quite near the ocean. The close ocean access is essential for racking up points in recovery soccer (one point for cold-water bath / ocean, one point for an epsom salt bath, one point for a nap during the day, one point for bed-before-9PM, and 1 bonus point for all four in one day). So far, I lead Simon by one point for the week, courtesy of an epsom salt bath. I keep trying to convince him to have a beer, so as to further increase my lead (minus one point for beer), but his willpower remains strong.
Anyway, back to the actual moving in. Simon’s father is visiting from Australia, so I moved into the super secret training room in the basement for now. It’s nice and cool and makes for excellent sleeping, which is also good for recovery points (see above).
So by now, you might be wondering what it is that we need to recover from. The answer is training, and lots of it. Not only is there lots of it, but it’s also very hard. Tuesday we got right down to business with a hard swim. Wednesday was a hard swim AND hard bike. Thursday was a hard run. Friday was a hard swim. Saturday was a hard bike. And Sunday was a hard swim. Of course, there are lots of other not-quite-so-hard workouts thrown in.
In addition to recovery soccer, we also spend lots of time building massive fires so that Jenny, Simon’s better half, can bake bread and pizza in the wood fired oven. So far, the record temp we’ve reached has been 1100 F. Then we let the oven cool to about 500 F, Jenny works her magic, and out comes this extraordinary bread. The bread is also very good for recovery, but we don’t get any points. But it’s very tasty.
All in all, it’s been a great week. Next week is relatively light as we get ready to race in Muskoka, which should be awesome as I try to chase down Simon, Colin, and Kyle on the bike, trying to be the first man to T2.
Jordan Rapp 