Fieldtrip to Clermont

Today the team went out to Clermont to ride from Elaine's then swim in her lake. The ride was much shorter than normal... but it was ALL hills. On the way out, I rode with CL, XXX, and Rainbow Bright. We had some great conversations. At one point we were talking about American Idol and The Voice. (BTW, I hope Colton or Jessica wins Idol!) CL was talking about some cute famous guys in The Voice. This then led to how if we found CL a handsome guy that looked like some folks from The Voice then we could cash it in for easy workouts at practice. What workout would you choose to avoid if you found the CL a handsome guy? Well... this is what the folks in our car had to say....  XXX would trade any swim, Rainbow Bright would trade any wacko swim drills, and I would trade any bike trainer workout. Your thoughts?

In Clermont we did Buckhill Road 5 (yes 5!) times. For those of you not familiar with Buckhill Road, it is filled with 4 or 5 large hills one right after another. One is super steep. When I went down it I was going 40 mph! Going 40mph on my first day riding my new tri bike was prolly not the best idea... I do remember thinking at one point that if I fell off my bike at that point I would prolly be road kill and Tubby would be a orphan.

Random thoughts about my new tri bike...
1. I have the dual water bottle holder wing thingy behind my seat. I like it for its functionality purpose (I for one am not a camel and do believe in drinking water often!) but the way they are setup, my legs hit them just slightly when I am not in aero. This is kind of annoying. I don't think there is a way for me to change the angle of them because of the way my saddle is. Hmm.
2. I notice with my tri bike that my fingers are too short. It is kind of hard shifting your gears without moving your hands.
3. My tri bike puts a lot more pressure on my shoulders. I have rotator cuff issues that started back in high school/college from swimming and this flares up every now and then. I could feel this bothering my shoulders more than normal today. Hmm. I hope that after riding it a while I will get used to all of this stuff...

The swim was great. The hardest part of the swim was putting on my wetsuit and swimming in a straight line. Haha. CL says you should always have a wetsuit buddy to help get it on easier. FYI, a wetsuit buddy basically reaches down the inside of your wetsuit (from your back), gets a good grip and either A) picks you up by your wetsuit so your body weight forces you down into the wetsuit..... (Mini Me modeled this for us today!)  or B) have your wetsuit buddy pull up on your wetsuit while you are hopping (this was me and CL). This works like a charm! If we had not done this I think I would still be out by the lake struggling to get my wetsuit on. So, once it was on we were ready to go. XXX and I swam side by side most of the time. At several points in the swim we ran into each other.... which was pretty funny considering we were the only ones near each other in a gigantic body of water. My hand smacked him in the butt (supposedly), and he hit me somewhere too. It was pretty funny. Also during the swim, Stebra was super concerned about gators. He has been talking about gators all week at practice... saying he would get eaten if he swam in the lake. Well, while he was swimming Mini Me swam up on him (basically ran into him by accident) and he mistaken her for a gator! He started thrashing in the water trying to get away from the so-called-gator. Too funny! He definitely got an ear-full about that when he got out of the water!

Today's Workout: Bike & Swim in Clermont

Bike Stats:
25.7 miles
Time: 1:47
Calories Burnt: 1355
Avg HR: 141  (Max HR: 190!... and yes the alarm was going off on my HR monitor saying I was about to die.)
Avg speed: 14.4 mph

Swim:
Approx 800 yard swim in lake (2 laps of the course)