I definitely didn’t know what I was in for on my trip out to Boulder for summer training. It all started with a short trip to Gainesville, a group ride, and a new 30″ CP followed by a surprisingly delicious Yuengling. Then I was off to Huntsville, Alabama to stay with the rocket scientist (literally) Andrew Hodges. Some good Italian, an early morning swim and pecan pancakes set me up nicely for a short trip to Memphis for the Memphis in May Triathlon. I originally planned on racing but with my lack of run training I just did the swim/bike as a workout on my road bike…in a lightning storm! Gemmell laughed as he went by…”What were you doing out there, Collington?”
Then things really got interesting. My original plan sent me north to St. Louis but considering the destruction in Joplin and the weather forecast for continued storms I went west towards Tulsa instead. Everything was great until I hit the Oklahoma/Kansas border and BAM! Massive hail. All of a sudden the $25K worth of bikes on the trunk rack of a car worth only $4K went from a funny joke to a serious problem. I pulled under an overpass, waited the storm out, and took off again only to find myself in more hail. So I pulled into a service station, cut a trucker off into a diesel fueling line and waited the storm out again. Lots of trucker horns and some choice words followed. Fortunately that was when the storm subsided for good.
With only one more short day of travel to Boulder the next day I thought I was in the clear, but Colorado was no better than Kansas. I learned my lesson the day before, though, and pulled into a gas station at the first sign of storms (and I parked by the unleaded pumps this time). I spent the next five hours in the diner at the Loaf n’ Jug in Flagler, CO watching as varying degrees of lightning, hail and rain passed over. I also made a few new friends that taught more than I ever wanted to know about Colorado state lottery scratch-off games.
The road to Boulder was rife with more storms so I diverted south to Colorado Springs where I arrived with the same loaded down Hyundai Elantra I departed with a little over four months prior. After one night on a couch and some good S/B/R training I finally made it to Boulder. And the weather is nice!
My winter training camp in Orlando ended with a long workout out at FL70.3. I raced the swim/bike and jogged the run. It turns out it’s against the rules to take your racing kit off like this.