Tri-ing in the Holy Land

The ramblings of a struggling triathlete in Israel

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Location: Israel

I'm the mother of 3, a teacher and a couch potato turned triathlete.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Training camp in Eilat -- part 2

Day 2 started with a 5 a.m. wakeup call.  Unfortunately, there was quite a bit of noise at the youth hostel during the night, so I hadn't slept very well, but I got up and got myself ready for the first workout of the day.

At 5:30, the team met to take a short ride to our "transition area" (in the area where the Eilat Triathlon will be at the end of the month).  Then we had a couple of hours of transition practice.  Each team (children, youth, adults) did something different.  The adult workout was supposed to be five parts, but we ran out of time (we had to be back at the youth hostel for breakfast), so we only did four of the five.  The first drill was a short swim (I'd say about 200-250 meters) in the Red Sea, followed by a fast run to where our transition area will be at the race.  The swim was great, but the run was...  well, painful.  There are a lot of small stones on the shore (which are covered by a long mat at the race) and the road up into the parking lot had a lot of small stones, too.  Running on stones barefoot was very unpleasant, but I did it.  The second drill was identical to the first, but I couldn't face doing that whole barefoot run again, so I cut it a little bit short.  The bottoms of my feet were very sore after the first two drills, but we weren't done running barefoot yet...

The third drill was another swim of the same length followed by a run to the makeshift transition area and then a 7 km ride.  Eilat is in the desert, but the desert is cold in the morning (and the Red Sea has a year-round temperature of 22-24 degrees Celcius) and I was shivering when I got on my bike.  It was cold!  Too bad I couldn't hold onto this feeling for later in the day. 

The fourth drill resembled the third, but the ride was longer and took us up on the Arava Road, which is the major highway leading into Eilat.  It was still very early in the morning, but there were a lot of trucks on the road and it was scary.  This is the road we do our race on, which is why we were training on it (well, that and the fact that there just aren't too many places to ride in Eilat).  I was very happy when this drill was over and I have to admit that I wasn't all that disappointed to see that we wouldn't have time for the final drill (a swim and a run) because I was getting very hungry and I knew I'd be running enough later on and the next day.

At 7:45, we headed back to the youth hostel and had time for a quick shower and change of clothes before breakfast. 

More to follow...

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