Saturday, March 12, 2011

It is so quaint...


A lot of people, when they first move here, will remark in the "quaintness" of Mexico, how things are just done Differently and isn't that cute and all. After a few years here we started using "isn't that quaint" to mean "aren't we fucked". So I paid my moneys and I got my reciept and I knew that today was supposed to be package pickup for the triatlon tomorrow. Except the receipt says nothing except pesos paid and the web site is just an advertisement. But I'm used to this in the land of quaintness so I started googling and finally on a site completely unrelated to the triatlon, I found TONS of info. Package pickup is today from 2pm to 5pm (which means I'll get there around 5) and body marking is today (we can't do it OURSELVES?) and while drafting is allowed, no MIXED drafting is allowed. HUH? So no females with males. If I'm going to draft it is going to have to be off another female. Hmmm...

So I've been doing recovery this week and while it was Really Hard at first to dial the intensity meter down, by today I started thinking I'll never remember how to hammer or go hard again. And while I got 3 swims in last week I was totally unable to do any hypoxic sets (3.5.7) unlike before. So I'm starting to have grave doubts as to tomorrow's race. I was really thinking I could actually race it (funny as it will be my FIRST tri, full of myself, yes I am) and now I'm thinking maybe I'm living in the land of quaintness.

At any rate I'll find out early tomorrow or freeze to death trying. We got hit with a norte yesterday and it was FREEZING this am for the bike. I can't imagine being WET and doing the bike. If I don't die of frozeness tomorrow it will be from exploding swelled head or from the quaintness.

Didja know the 20km bike has THREE LOOPS? And the 5km run has TWO? Now THAT is quaint. :) I'm not sure but I think that either we will swim from the sea up a laguna and river or will be running a fair amount from the swim to the bike. SO quaint.

Double oh, I was down 2 kg last week but the legs were dead so I increased my food intake and plopped on another kilo. Sigh. Was hoping for less rolls of fat tomorrow. Now I totally need to rethink my wardrobe choices for jiggle AND frozeness. Sigh.

2 comments:

Jody said...

Best post ever! LOL!! No heterosexual drafting allowed? That takes the fun out of it.

You are going to ROCK this tri. You are swimming all open water for training, and most of those folks are pool/lap swimming. AdVANtage. Use it. That and training with that stud of yours on the bike. Rock and roll Kathy.

I can't wait to hear your quaint race report!!! Have! A! BLAST!!!!

Kathy said...

I KNOW!! Is that insane or what? I'm so totally confused after going to the meeting. The swim is easy enough, leave the beach, go to the bouy, round the muelle, come back to a different beach, go through the waters of death (seriously, they have a STRONG CURRENT you have to traverse leaving the sea because you end swimming....wait for it... UP RIVER! Yes, almost the same amount in the sea as swimming UP FUCKING RIVER against a current so strong they will have kayaks lining the entire river so you can REST on them when you get tired of fighting the current!!! OMG, shoot me now.

THEN, because the fiasco with the sea and the river isn't enough, we have to run with our bikes 250m to the mounting line, ride up a serpentine road to the carretera (highway, which will be closed just for us) and do THREE LOOPS to equal 20 km, then back down to transition (again 250 m run) and then run out this bizarre loop that isn't a loop but an out and back and on the way back to take a tangent and out and back that to the beginning and do that TWICE.

I'll be starting 2nd to last wave (only 250 participants though) so at least I can follow the herd. :)

There is no cut off time for this. Take as long as you need to. For a sprint, that doesn't sound like especially good news to me. The swim is going to be HARD. If I make it through without getting lost I'll be happy. Oh, and he contradicted himself twice on left and right side of the bouy so I still have no idea where to go when I hit the bouy. I'm sure it will all be clear (one way or another) manana. ;)