Chapter 2: the fight for survival.

    In the past, the weeks immediately after training camp are pretty crucial in the grand scheme of things, although they are relatively easy weeks, they just build a foundation for bigger and harder weeks in the future. That wasn't the case this year, the reigns were loosened just enough to allow for some changes in the workouts, aka, we made the easy workouts just a lil harder. Pretty good news for me as I often feel pretty flat until the bigger workouts.

     Now some not so great news was that I have class random thursdays throughout the year during our practice time. Pretty stupid if you ask me, but I must endure, and that sometimes this means getting up at 6:30am to grind away while the rest of the team sleeps. Not gunna lie, I did feel pretty hardcore. And it did give me an extra 12 hours recovery before the race...

     First meet of the year, the simple thought is, "its gunna be a tempo, no one wants to play just yet, lets have some fun lads". But just as easy as that thought popped into the head, it got blown out. Apparently that was the day we needed to push from the gun. Turned out to be a pretty damn good idea too. Bunch of us under 26min, and even a couple of us beat the AUS champ from last year. Let us roll baby, roll! 

    Now of course it is XC and the nose hasn't won a battle since at least grade 8, but with a constant supply of kleenex and tylenol and of course water we toed the line for a second saturday with a different strategy. 600m(@ 10km effort)-1km(@tempo). It took a while, like 7km to finally break everyone, but it worked, a solid finish, a solid workout, nothing to do but look ahead. My body on the other hand, wasn't a true friend and cramped up in the last mile, and I dropped 5sec in the final km. 

     I do have a handle on this cold, I'll be fine. (Some guys on the team are starting to chat a bit about maybe taking me down, I think they keep forgetting that the real races are 10km, giddy up)

     The fight: not only to stay on this all-star team but to built this all-star team to what it can be, to prove ourselves as one of the best in the nation, or even something as simple as to prove the nation that we do belong and that we aren't scared. The fight is on! Hail and Hell!


cough cough sniffle sniffle.

rj