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TALL TALES
I am 6’2”. This is taller thaN the world average
height for men, but I am female. Hence the
title’s double entendre. It could be triply
witty if I spelled one of the words differently
but we won’t go there. I should also say that my
triathlon training tales are not tall in the
sense of being lies. Honesty is usually much
more entertaining, so that is what you’ll get
from me, Heather Wurtele: freakishly tall,
recently turned elite, long-course, triathlete,
and coachling of Clint Lien from PRPP (for all
you race result googlers, it was Heather
Danforth until this year).
I work full-time as a scientist at the Pacific
Forestry Centre – a federal research station in
Victoria, BC, Canada. My husband, Trevor, and I
spend the rest of our time training for long
distance triathlon. It isn’t all, milk and
honey, sunshine and lollipops, but we are
gloriously happy with our alternative lifestyle.
This past week was a rest week for me. It
follows a 3 week build where I was logging in
more km’s in all three sports than I have ever
done before, and feeling awesome. It all
culminated with a 5:15 ride where I completely
cracked about 30 min from home. It was that
‘more food will not help, my legs are cooked’,
kind of feeling that made me really think “Damn,
I have been training pretty hard!” (that is,
after dismissing thoughts of “maybe I shouldn’t
have climbed up Mt. Finlayson or pushed so hard
for that stretch along the highway… I should
have paced myself better”). My t-run was a
rather painful 15 min ordeal. The swallow of
coke and bite of banana before heading out the
door didn’t have its usual effect. Clint said he
wanted me tired by Sunday night, and that I was.
Anyway, I was going to talk about my rest week.
The more I seem to develop as a triathlete, the
more I seem to suck at resting. One of the great
things about having a coach is having someone
hold the reigns and keep that view of the
ultimate goal, rather then get rapped up in the
short-sighted need to feel like you are training
‘hard enough’ all the time.
Luckily for me, my rest week coincided with a
fieldwork trip that I had to make to Vancouver
to collect wood samples from a mill. The first
day I managed to get in a super-early morning
swim before catching the ferry, but it went
downhill from there. I felt like the workout
gods had it in for me. After a day-long deluge,
tromping around in a hard-hat, rain gear and
steel toed gumboots (an excellent
getting-mistaken-for-a-man type of outfit, I
discovered), the weather cleared. I was excited
to get out for a run after the tedious sampling
at the mill, but, lo and behold, I forgot my
running shoes in Victoria. Curses. I decided to
go to the rec centre "up the road" (a highly
unpleasant 30 min walk along a major highway)
and do weights and swim instead. I swallowed my
pride, hard, and accepted the fact that I was
going to look like and idiot wearing gym clothes
and black leather dress shoes (it was either
that, or steel toed gumboots!). At least I was
going to get some training in.
There were nice spinning bikes arranged for a
class, but no one around, so I jumped on one and
was getting into a nice little ride when the
instructor, and a bunch of folks with figures
not suited to tight clothing, came in with water
bottles and towels to ruin my fun. I decided
that, rather than leave and prance around the
gym in my dress shoes (I was more into spinning
than doing weights anyway), I would stay and
join in on the class. Oh brother. What a joke.
As an alternative form of aerobics, okay, I can
accept spin classes, but they bear little
relation to what one does when one actually
rides a bike. I got some pitying looks from my
neighbours when, for example, I chose to stay
seated and giver, instead of doing weeny little
triceps push-ups while pedaling, or standing for
5 strokes, sitting for 5 like they were (clearly
much to their physical benefit).
Obviously, I was too dense to get the "routine"
or too tired because I wasn't a regular. “Eeww,
and like I was like sweating, and like my bike
made noise (funny what happens when you actually
apply a little resistance!!) and, um, like,
what's up with the shoes, gawd…”
I couldn’t escape fast enough after that was
over.
Brought my swim stuff and went to the pool to
catch the lane swim time. I was a bit hungry
from work and spinning before and I felt slow. I
always feel slow doing easy workouts in rest
weeks. The conditions didn't help. There was one
lane, beside the dive/tank public swim area, and
it was crowded. I tried to view all the waves
and the brutal swimmers all around me as good
practice for a triathlon start, but I couldn't
get into a good rhythm. Amazingly, I toughed out
two sets of 500 before it got super crowded and
then my swim turned into sets of various
sprint/super slow speeds trying to get around
all the breast-strokers. Sigh. I was frustrated
at the end and felt feeble for getting out after
2300m. Repeating my mantra “it’s okay, it’s a
rest week” didn’t make me feel better.
Back in the change room I realized that I forgot
a towel. Attempting to dry off with my
non-cotton, non-absorbent, workout shorts was
the perfect cap to a horrible evening. Oh, that
and walking home in the POURING rain along the
highway and getting splashed multiple times by
large transport trucks.
In retrospect (isn’t it true that so much of
what we appreciate about sport, and life in
general, only becomes evident as we look back?)
I felt good about myself for having the
willpower to get to the rec centre in the first
place. Getting frustrated, or feeling
temporarily disappointed when training doesn’t
go as planned is understandable, but why waste
energy being negative? By choosing to view the
whole experience as proof of my mental fortitude
(Plan B: sit in the hotel and watch TV), I
gained a whole lot more than some small measure
of sustained fitness.
My rest week ended with the Olympic distance UBC
triathlon: The earliest season triathlon in
Canada, involving a pool swim, notoriously
cold/miserable weather, and lengthy transitions
involving tights, arm warmers and rain jackets.
This year was no exception, but the sheets of
water falling from the sky were fine with me
because I didn’t get two flat tires like last
year. UBC was the first triathlon I ever did and
holds a special place in my heart. It isn’t,
however, known for having a deep field of top
athletes. Proof of that fact is that I won it
this year, and set a new course record of 2:14.
Thank goodness that rest week is over!
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