The time difference caught up with me and I was wide awake at 2am. I did my best to fall back asleep but ended up just tossing and turning until 5am when I finally gave up got ready for the aquathon.
We drove down to the Atlantic Ocean and jogged one lap of the 3×1.25mile run course. Everyone else then put on wetsuits. Unfortunately my wetsuit is in my bike bag with my bike which continues to be MIA. Despite my lack of neoprene the water was actually surprisingly pleasant.
What wasn’t quite so pleasant was the 4-5ft swells on our planned swim course. The original plan was to do two laps around this very unique rock. With significant swell crashing into the rock we altered the course and swam a 1kilometer course parallel to the shore.
While attempting to get into the ocean a massive wave completely undercut my legs and so ended up with sand in ever orifice and I also lost my goggles. Thanks to Christine McKinlay who lend me a pair of goggle to use during the swim.
Once out of the swim we transitioned to a 3lap run which started straight up these stairs
Then we had a loop of the lighthouse over looking the waterfront before running back down to the transition area only to do it all again 2 more times.
After the aquathon we hoped on our bikes
and rode a hilly route from Biarritz to Eaux Bonnes including le col de Marie Blanc which was ~8km at an average of 9.3% which meant the last 4 kilometres were closer to 12-13%. The first 42km of the ride was controlled as John Newsom set a nice warm up pace at the front. From 42km to 84 km the pace built and we road up the first significant climb at a crispy pace. It was fun to have a great group of 6 guys taking turns pulling at the front: George, Theiry, Glen, Phil, John and myself.
Once John had planted the seed that we were going to aim for the two bonus points by hitting 200km we added a few out and back sections to add a bit more mileage before starting le col de Marie Blanc. John and George went off the front and I did my best to go with them but my legs were having none of it and when the gradient consistently kicked up above 11-12% I really started hurting. Today I was glad that the bike that Ian from Pyrénées Multisport had set me up with had a 30T on the rear cassette.
At the top of the climb George and John were eager to get going so I downed a bit of coke and put on a jacket for the descent. We needed an extra 8km to make 200km for the day, so a 4km out and back was added to the route. The last climb to Eaux Bonnes was 4.3km. When I looked at my GPS it read 193.8…I was sweating so hard on le col de Marie Blanc that my sweat droplets had hit the Garmin display and paused it 2km from the top. Even though I knew I had ridden those 2km I really didn’t want some to see my Strava file which read 198km. As you can only do “training that counts” for 12 hours a day I had to hit 200km before 6:13pm. So will my computer reading 198.7km and the time reading 6:09 I turned around to gain the last 1.3km on the downhill, hitting 200km at 6:12:46pm.
Totals for the day
Swim 1km
Bike 204.5km
Run 7miles
Total training time: ~8:45
Tomorrow is another big day on the bike with ~4000m of climbing and likely a run off the bike.
Epic Camp France 2019 