Day 6 – Some fun under the sun and in the wind

When we woke up this morning I was dreading the day.  After our rest day yesterday, I just wanted to be sedentary again – lay in my bed until the sun was above the horizon, eat a normal meal without worrying if I had eaten enough calories to get me through another workout, go shopping or some such .  The winds were roaring at 6:30 as I hurriedly drank my tea and ate my banana/pb/honey sandwich.  I almost went to ask Tara if I could stay at the villa to swim my 3K in the pool.  However, as people started to filter out of the yard to load the vans, I told myself to stop being so stupid and get your wetsuit to swim.  So I did.The swim surprisingly went well. When we arrived at the beach, the sun was just peaking over the horizon.  As we all struggled and toppled over while putting on our wetsuits, we watched the sliver of sun grow into a full blown morning glow.  The water was calmer than we expected.  Although there were swells, there were no whitecaps.  I just felt great today in the water.  Unlike the first day when I was fighting the ocean, today I actually felt like I was swimming.  I quickly settled into a rhythm of swimming and sighting the buoys.  I enjoyed watched the little fish swimming around the submerged pieces of basalt (lava rocks) as we swam by.  It was an overall great swim and was over before I knew it.

The ride today was cut short due to the wind, which were steady winds of 25-35kph, with gusts up to 49kph.  Often times the winds felt like they were coming from all directions.  The planned route only covered about 57k.    We headed out towards the park nationale de Timanfaya.  I was riding with Tara and Karen this morning as the rest of the group had already split into pieces.  However, I had a nagging feeling that we were going the wrong way.  I tried to voice this opinion at several turns, but since I don’t really know the island all that well, I didn’t want to put my foot down on directions, so on we went — doing the route of the day backwards . At some point Tara stopped and we all pulled out maps to figure out where we were, which was rather off course.  However, being so close to 20k off course, we decided to make the best of it and just leave it at, “we did it in purpose for the extra bonus points.” !!  We rolled into the lunch stop last in the pack and had a hurried meal before heading on.

The ride home was tough.  I was focused on just hanging to Suzanne’s wheel while she was hammering away.  I kept thinking, if i am working this hard just to hang on, how hard is she working?!?

I know I am supposed to feel tired on day 6, but I think i am also mentally tired of trying to just, “dig a little deeper.”  I have no idea how people race long stage races.  That said — It’s pretty amazing how much more we can accomplish than we actually think.  I have been hitting a point mid-afternoon where I wonder, “how am I going to make it home?”  However, I get something to eat, take in more fluids and although sometimes it is more graceful than other days, I make it home .  This blog has digressed to become contemplative, which I think is a reflection of my fatigue, but every day here, I have done more than I have ever even attempted to do in consecutive days.  Though exhausting, it is pretty amazing.  2 more days, 6k more swimming, and 300k more riding.

As with other days, I ended my day in the pool, today was my interval swim.  Signing off for now, I have to go catch some Zzzzs and dream of long stretches of road that have absolutely no wind