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North Carolina

Karel and I got into NC late last night. It was a long drive but it went by fast. Karel has been in jacksonville for the last 2 weeks so I had to make a trip to see him as soon as my finals were over. I was so Karel-deprived. It is nice when you have a best friend as a fiance. I truely do enjoy my time with him. Ok, blah blah, sappy sappy. I know...I'm in love :)
Alright, I'll talk training. So I get to JAX on thurs afternoon and Karel was super tired from getting back from SC at 2 in the morning on thursday. We went to bed super early cause I was exhausted from my am training and the ride up to JAX. We stayed at a friends house so it was nice to sleep in a real bed after a 4 hour drive. Friday morning we slept in until 6:30am and after the morning coffe we went for a spin. It has been months since karel and I have ridden together and it was really enjoyable. He had to do a couple 90-second pick-ups to warm-up his legs but other than that, we rode together the whole time. 22 miles and we occasionally chatted as we rode. It was a beautiful morning and a very nice ride. Karel said I looked good on the bike and was riding really strong...coming from him, I took the complement and it will carry me through many future training sessions. When I am riding my bike, I love the feeling of being on my bike but I don't always push as hard as I do for swimming and running. THe bike was the last thing I learned how to do with triathlons (hence the pic of me on my hybrid on my blog). He is absolutely an inspiration in my eyes. After the ride Karel was ready for breakfast and I was ready to run. It was a nice and cool for the bike but it got really warm when I headed for my run. Since we were in a neighborhood, I ran in a loop which was exactly 1 mile. Coming from the house it took me a little over 1 minute to start the loop so I decided to do loops and run to the house and back out. I did 6 loops total, plus the 1 minute or so to get to the house and I had a little over 7 miles in exactly an hour. It was a really hard run and I pushed super hard as I descended each loop for numbers 1-3. I kinda slowed down the pace for the last 3. Afterwards, I mixed some whey protein w/ water cause I was super drained and I didn't have the energy to make a smoothie. I had a nice bowl of oatmeal and I added everything I saw in the kitchen into it. Cereal, nuts, raisins, milk, yogurt, PB and a little piece of an oatmeal raisin cookie (Oh, it was so good!). I finished some coaching programs for some of my athletes and before i knew it, hours had gone by and it was time to hit the road.
Karel and I just finished a beautiful ride in NC. I didn't want to do anythig tough this morning cause my legs are super stiff from the past 5 days of training and riding in the car for 6 hours last night (and 4 hours to JAX on thurs). I left before Karel and headed on some great rollers...you don't see those in clearwater! Of course as I am flying above 25 mph I see that the trees are blowing in the same direction that I am going. 10 miles and it is time to turn around into the wind. So, all those descends and easy climbs then turned into big climbs against the wind. As I am about to turn into the neighborhood (staying at my friends' house, Christi...so sweet to let us stay here even though she isn't in town this weekend :() I see Karel. I turn around and we are talking on the side of the road just commenting on how beautiful it is here.
Well, Karel just got back from his ride and I am going to introduce him to Trader Joes. I can't wait! First we need to get some yummy food since the small whey protein smoothie I made about an hour ago isn't holding me over anymore. Time for food!
Karel races at 4:30pm tonight in downtown Charlotte. I haven't been downtown here before so I am super excited to be in the city.
Good luck to all those racing at St.Croix this weekend and for everyone else, keep up the great training! *Kate, have a great training camp!
If anyone is in the Georgia area tomorrow, Karel and I will be in Sandy Springs for his race at 3:45pm (sunday). Can't wait to see the last crit of Speed Week!