Me vs the Hurricane

Let’s be clear…I won vs the Hurricane.  Well, actually…we won.

Because I’m tired and already behind a day on getting this written up and posted, we’re going to go with pure picture mode.  Booyeah!

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(Our little Spot Tracker GPS trail)

We drove down to Williamsburg, VA on Friday afternoon in hopes of enjoying a weekend of camping flled with triathlon – as there was the Patriot’s Half, Oly and Sprint Tri’s all weekend long.  Except..Hurricane Hannah (then tropical storm Hannah) decided it had other plans for us.  We knew when we left we were going to be camping in a tropical storm, but neither of us were too worried.  At the very worst we’d check-in to a hotel, and we were keeping a close eye on things.

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(Me digging a trench around our campsite, amazingly it mostly worked)

It stopped raining though around 8PM Friday, just in time to put dinner and our campfire together.

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Saturday…

And it actually stayed clear out till around 4:30AM on Saturday morning.  It was at that juncture that it crapped all over us for basically the rest of Saturday.  After we went out for a 10K run in the rain (hilarious btw, the winds and rains), it was time to spend the rest of the day.

We solved that problem by going to a nearby wanna-be Whole Foods/Starbucks/Wegmans thing and finding ourselves a corner and playing Monopoly for 6+ hours.  They had incredible free samples.  We…umm..ate a lot of free samples.

IMGP0132 1280 x 960However, by about 6PM on Saturday – the weather cleared up a bit – and the sun came out!  So we left the grocery store.

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We went back to the campsite to hang stuff up, and cook dinner.

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(Note the little gravel-pad I made the night before…engineering excellence)

Oh… I almost forgot – we found Tiki Goblets at the 99 cent store in Williamsburg.  Score!

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And then we campfired fairly late into the night.

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Sunday…

While the half scheduled for Saturday was canceled, the Sprint and Oly races were on Sunday and good to go.  Except due to runoff they swapped out the swim for a run. :(

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Watching was a blast – and much less tiring than actually racing.  It was my friends first tri – and she completely rocked it!  Pure domination.

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A sign I saw out on the course for the nearby ferry:

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The finish area was fairly sparse as far as people goes, but we both still had an awesome time.

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Oh, and I also saw fellow tri blogger Sarah out there, so that was pretty cool too.

After getting home around 9PM or so (we umm…took our time at the pool), it was time to get MY workout in.  Craptastic.

Ninety minutes on the trainer in Z2.  Z2 on a Computrainer is much harder than Z2 outside, because you don’t get any breaks for downhill segments.  But I pulled out the IMCDA course I bought earlier in the year and rode the first 30 miles of it, so that kept things interesting.  Well that and Americas Next Top Model (seriously…there was nothing else to watch).

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I played around with TrainingPeaks WKO+ a little bit to see my data, normally I just upload it to TrainingPeaks online, but this was interesting.

Oh, and earlier today (Monday) the Garmin Edge 705 arrived.  I got it to prevent little incidences like last weekends 6 hours bike ride from occurring.

Lastly…I leave you with two cookies.  We got cookies this weekend after our 10K run in the blowing rain on Saturday.  She took this picture, it’s just simply an awesome photo.

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13 Comments

  1. Sounds like a fun and great weekend! At least your friend got in her first triathlon… even if it was turned into a du :)

  2. Great photos! What a trip!! I’m glad they had plenty of free samples for you to eat…

    And what do you mean you only watched America’s Next Top Model because “nothing else was on.”

    ????

    ;)

  3. Next Top Model, lol.

    No re-runs of Dog Whisperer???

    VMA???

    Congrats to your friend on her tri. Did she at least use that horn?

  4. Great report I saw you at the race taking picture but you were appearing and disappearing I didn’t have a chance to talk to you. Enjoy your training and the nations tri
    Eric

  5. Sounds like it was a wild weekend! Weather and everything else.

  6. Mmm wine in tiki goblets… does life get any better than that?

  7. Ray –

    Excellent weekend. Looks like a blast. Even with Hannah.

    If you get a chance, either post or e-mail me a shot of the 705 mounted. I’m really curious to see its size, etc.

    -bill

  8. There’s just too much to comment on this blog so I’ll try to keep it brief.
    *First comes Joe Vs. the volcanao and now this ;shakes her head;
    *Red wine before racing..good for the heart :)
    *I could live off of samples and commit murder playing monopoly. I’m a poor sport if I can’t buy the “cheapies”.
    I want IMC bike workout! Cool wattage info. I tend to read on my trainer, turns out it payed off. Some of that knowledge won me compression socks at a tri club trivia game.
    Who gets the cookies?

  9. SLB

    Another average weekend in the life of Rainmaker!

    Great stuff, thanks for sharing

  10. great trip.. you are so clever with your campsite engineering skills…haha

    I want a cookie now!!

  11. Yay for your friend’s first tri and congrats to you both on your finish and your positive attitudes while camping during Hanna! But now we need to talk about the monopoly for 6+ hours! Rainmaker, there are so many fantastic games out there – San Juan, Killer Bunnies, Settlers of Catan, and the dice game version of Alhambra to name a few of the most interesting, portable ones. I know I’m a game nerd (ok, snob!), but seriously with the way you like food and fun – how can you settle for monopoly?

  12. I’m impressed with the camping techniques. I was supposed to camp out after the Half, but since it was canceled, a few of us got a hotel room for Saturday night, assuming the aftermath wouldn’t have been fun to set up camp in. Turn outs we were wrong, and it was beautiful there Saturday evening.

    Yay for meeting Sarah! She’s on my team.

  13. What a great weekend mixing camping, good food, racing…and rain??!! Congrats to your friend on her first tri!