supposedly on the very near edge of official burn out. so after the race on sunday, and the subsequent beer, i was told i had 2 days off. no training. period. good idea, in theory. figures that those 2 days are the only 2 days i had to move all of my crap from one apartment to another. luckily my old apartment was only on the 2nd floor, so i was able to haul it box-by-box down one flight of stairs, out the back door and into my awaiting truck. but still, that’s a lot of stairs. once i got to my new place, they have a huge dolly and i park on the same level. cake. anyway, so my 2 ‘rest days’ were spent moving. = not rest days. last night i’m taking the last load to my new apartment, and i text a buddy of mine to ask where he swims on this side of the hill (i moved from beverly hills to the valley, something i said i’d never do). he responded by sending me a map with a dropped pin (LOVE iphones) and proceeded to tell me he was starting at 1830 if i wanted to come. that was 15 minutes away. i was heading in the opposite direction. long story short, i tried to get out of it, but dave wasn’t letting that happen. so i take my pull buoy with me thinking i’d have a nice easy cool down swim, keep him company and time him for his time trial. i get there, and in front of the complex are all my newly found friends from this past weekend’s race, all the valley coach people. big red flag. gerardo pops up, HUGE red flag. not good when you’re supposed to have the day off and you’ve been throw into a damn masters swim with a totally different team/coach. there was no getting out of it at this point; talk had turned to the race this past weekend, how our relay team whooped ass. i got thrown into the middle-of-the-road group, which pleased me afterwards. never done a masters class, and i suck at counting laps, so that was interesting. fought a cramping calf the entire damn way; managed to pull a few 1:45s out of my ass, but mainly 1:50s. i was happy - i wasn’t supposed to be working out at all, so i hadn’t eaten much of anything. was NOT prepared for that swim whatsoever. thanks dave.
that experience, as well as this weekend’s race brought an interestingly new dilemma to light. that would be the politics involved with triathlon. specifically the coach/team aspect. this weekend i was with the valley coach people, gerardo is a coach for them. so when time came to accept our ‘awards’ i was thrown a valley coach tshirt. not a problem, i put it on. but then i felt weird, because TNS had gotten me to that point, and now i had to put on this other tshirt. so what did i do? i wore both and sweated like a damn pig on a spit. hell, i’m not giving up my discount for shit. but how does all that work? do you tell your coach about the conversations you had with this other coach (well, ya do now), or is it offensive to your own coach? do you take coaching tips from another coach and really adopt them, or do you let them fall right out the other ear and get your own coach’s advice later? sunday i felt like i was cheating on a boyfriend, a boyfriend who was great in bed, but was out of the town for the weekend when i really needed some. i never thought triathlon would be so political. this coach doesn’t like this coach, this group is out-of-their-fucking-minds-crazy, trying to break into this group is like trying to kidnap the pope from the vatican...it’s all too much. too much bullshit. and it’s awkward. and i don’t do awkward. i tend to play peacemaker. and there’s no peace to be had here. everyone seems just content with the way things are. can’t we all just get along?
which brings me to pelicans. they’re not nice birds. and they’re fucking huge. and stubborn. when it comes to a face-off in the ocean, like the one i had this morning, the bird usually wins. and they were out in mass, as were the sea gulls. freaked me out. really tough chop at the ocean speed circuit this am. i was able to get in 4 laps, but i got my ass handed to me by the very first wave. good times.
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