Again this year I had the pleasure of attending the Canadian Women's Endurance Camp down in Seneca, South Carolina. I had such a great time last year, that I thought that I'd try and go again this year.
My trip had a little bit of a rocky start with a layover in Chicago. It appears that the one time I'm going to experience a snow storm this summer, would be in the middle of my flights. The flight into Chicago was good until we actually got into Chicago where it was full on blizzard mode. Needless to say my flight to Greenville was cancelled and I had to spend the night in the hotel, all by my lonesome.
Early next morning I trucked it over to the airport early early, to make sure I'd make my flight on time. The airport was completely packed with all the other people whose flights were cancelled the day before. It would have been completely fine except for United had kept my baggage overnight, so I was overly worried that it wasn't going to make it to Greenville with me. Especially since I had been changed to two different airlines before boarding any plane that morning. The most stressful part of flying with american airlines is that i always feel like my luggage is going to get lost. However after all that I made it to Greenville unscathed and so did my luggage.
Since I had spent the night in Chicago I missed the first day of riding (which i heard was super windy anyways), so I started the second somewhat fresh.
Day 2: Team Time Trial work. A pretty gorgeous day, and DK put most of the mountain bikers together on a team so we really rocked the boat.
Day 3: Whitewater Falls. This is a 10 mile climb with a little bit of down on the way up, and at the very tip top is the steepest part. My bike unfortunately doesn't have a compact and my climbing, so it was a rough go, but i made it and it rocked. One of my favorite reasons for doing a climb is so I can descend with my super skillz. This a pretty fun descend too with lots of tight corners. DK put us into three different self selecting groups to descend so we would have less of a chance of crashing. We descended without crashes (yay!). This day we ended up doing 100 km which was awesome.
Day 4: Rest Day! It rained today, so it was a perfect day to take it off. We rode a cute 1 hour loop in a forest which was a nice change from all of the other roads we were riding on.
Day 5: INDIVIDUAL TT! The previous night we had a sport come and speak to us about race prep and mental skills so we had a chance to put them to use on this day with the ITT. We rode out to the same place, though by a different less hilly route. Warmed up, and then TT'd! I felt I had a pretty good TT, I was focused the whole time and I "rolled out the carpet" as some might say. I ended up doing it 14 seconds faster than last year, which is at least an improvement. We also ended up doing a recovery ride in the evening which was awesome and we just blasted Ri-ri from the Iphone the whole time!
Day 6: Endurance Ride. Today was by far the hardest out of the whole week. It was yet another rainy day, however the rain stopped a half hour into our ride. I just had a total suffer fest at the back today and just kept running low on energy. To make matter worse we semi got lost, and instead of the 2 hour ride we were supposed to do, it got extended to three hours. Anyways we got home and somehow I snuck into the shower first, leading to hot water :D.
Gab also made cupcake for next eve's potluck and she was nice enough to buy all the decorating supplies for us to do it with so we had spent the evening in the best way.
Day 7: Sasafrass. This was our longest day of the week, and my favorite. To start off we had some of the most gorgeous weather all week, which made this ride much more bearable (last year it was rainy and just plain miserable and I had to duck out early). The main highlight of the ride is a climb called Sasafrass. It super steep and takes about 40 min to complete. Steep enough that we had to weave back and forth to make it up (that is if you don't have a comapct). Anyways its awesome and I love hardass shit like that so I totally rocked it and and this year we made it all the way to the top.
The rest of the day was super chill and rexlaxed, becuase once we had finished the climb everyone's stress just fell off their shoulders. By the end we were all getting super tired, and Kinley and I started singing and getting rambuckous(quoting rage comics). Once I got off the bike my legs were just jello, and luckly I had a massage that evening. Karlee, Caeli, and I all spent some time in the beautiful lake that just happened to be in the backyard of the lake house we were staying in.
Day 8: Final Day/ Sprints. Today was the final day so we took it pretty chill and went out to do a sprint workout near the abadonded diner. It ended up being another gorgeous day (sunny and warm enough for shorts and jersey) and did about 6 sprints. By the end of our sprint workout I knew my legs were done for the week and just went easy till the end.
I'm sad for the camp to be over, because I met a lot of great girls again this time around, and also saw some friends I don't get to see often, but it's regrettably time to go back to Canada, and move onto the next adventure of Canmore for Reading week. The race season starts in just over 2 months, and as each day approaches I just get that more excited. I'll be moving out to Vancouver just as April ends to start the season with a new team, Trek Red Truck, with their première year of mountain biking.
