If we are social media pals, you may have noticed that I broke all kinds of posting rules a few weeks ago by bombarding my feed with pictures of Liz and I on a training trip to Sunny Southern California.

The purpose of the trip was two-fold: log some big miles, and race in the hot, hot desert sun at Desert International Tri.

I was going to write up some kind of recap of the week but Liz did a WAY better job than I ever could, and you can read about it here. I will, however, bombard you with more pictures and my own race report.

Inspiration Point overlooking LA

If there’s a beach, there’s a handstand attempt

This is my artsy attempt.

This was hanging on the door to our room. The irony was not lost on moi.

Meet Joey. Joey grosses me out. Apparently Joey ‘likes to meet new people’. Uh huh.

Incapable of hiding my glee

Cutest. Human. Ever.

This swim started 4000m ago in the pitch dark. I survived.

Socks!

More ‘artsy’

California much?

I’d like to say that this is the aftermath of something. It’s not.

Not unlike Liz, my level of caring about this race was hovering somewhere between “F&^ it” and “Can’t I just stay in bed?”, particularly when we got up in the morning, in the desert, to the sound of pouring rain on the roof. Do you know what rain in the desert after jamming Instagram with pics of sunshine is? This is what it is:

karma

[kahr-muh]

noun

Hinduism, Buddhism. action, seen as bringing upon oneself inevitableresults, good or bad, either in this life or in a reincarnation: inHinduism one of the means of reaching Brahman.

Compare bhakti (def 1), jnana.

Theosophy. the cosmic principle according to which each person isrewarded or punished in one incarnation according to that person’sdeeds in the previous incarnation.

fate; destiny.

Synonyms: predestination, predetermination, lot, kismet.

the good or bad emanations felt to be generated by someone or something:

Lets get out of here. This place has bad karma.

So anyway, yeah. It was raining. Hard. Oh well. We hearty Canadians squeezed into wetsuits, high-fived and got it done. Here’s how it went down for me.

Swim: I do believe that while my swim is improving, I still swam like an inebriated eel. The saving grace is that I got through transition quickly and out on the bike efficiently.

Bike: The bike was totally flat, which usually puts me at a bit of a disadvantage, what with my huge size and all. I much prefer a course that has big hills on which I can pass all those big boys. No matter, I put my head down and pedaled my gradually freezing self to the transition. I didn’t race with a watch or a bike computer, so I didn’t really know where I stood. I just know that no girls passed me, so that was good.

When I got back to transition, lo and behold, there were no other bikes there. Neat! I fumbled to take off my helmet and shoes and off I went with frozen feet and hands.

Run: Also totally flat, also not my fave. I was off in lala-land for most of it, picking people off and focusing on moving my frozen feet. I finally warmed up for the last 3kms, passed Bobby within sight of the finish line (sorry, Bobby!) and managed to win my age group. So yay me!

There was no loitering post-race. We had one mission and one mission only in mind: In n Out burger.

Mission? Accomplished.