Well I've had about an eight month summer vacation as I opted to take the second semester off from school and honestly I wish it would never end! This post is about the latter half of my summer vacation which includes travelling to faraway places (ie Quebec), biking up a mountain and making pie. Here are some highlights of summer 2012!
June:
-
Getting antsy to start racing. Test my racing fitness at Vikes relays on a 4
x 100 relay with some grade 3s. Find
myself in a heated battle with a speedy grade 3 boy (grade 3s can run a LOT
faster than you think). Tweak my
hamstring and lose the race. Hammy hurts
for a while. Ego hurts more.
July:
-
First World Cup in home province in
Edmonton! The course was basically hill
repeats on the bike and run which made for a super intense and hard race. The heat didn’t make the race any easier
either. Pretty much red-lined the whole
run and actually welcomed my 10 second penalty as a nice little breather in the
middle of the race. My penalty also got
me some air time on the CBC coverage because of the “costly mistake by
Pennock”. Super pleased with a 4th
place finish! A little delirious after the race as you can tell by my loopy
signature that I don’t remember signing:
Canadian Podium
-
Magog Continental Cup was the next race on deck
at the end of July! Magog is a super fun resort town complete with a cute
chocolatier shop owned by Rafael, who my family got to know when we came to
race two years ago. The race went well
and I placed 2nd behind my friend Joanna Brown aka Jo Bro after she
blasted off on the run.
August:
- Became a full-time Olympic super fan. For both the Women’s and Men’s Triathlon, I
got up at ungodly hours to watch the races unfold live with other hard core
fans.
-
Russy P. came out to Victoria for a week long
Pennock training camp! I took him on his first ride on waterfront and he got his
first flat tire which would have been okay if we knew how to change tires and
if the 100m final in the Olympics wasn’t on in 30 minutes. Said some things I didn’t mean (you come to
Victoria and all you do is get flats!) but it was okay because I hammered home
to get the car to pick him up and got to watch Bolt just in the knick of
time. We may or may not have watched an
instructional video on how to change flats afterwards…
Russell at a hipster breakfast place in Victoria
-
The last stop on the series of Canadian races
was in sunny Kelowna. Our group went out a week before and had a bit of a fun
training camp leading up to the race which even included tubing and hot dogs
(whoa triathletes can have fun!). Race
went well, fed off the excitement of the music and the cheers and had my first
win on an Olympic distance course. SO
proud of little Russy P. for having an awesome swim and making lead pack in the
Junior Elite race! Shout outs to all the
speedy ‘berta kids for fast racing, including KOS champs Laurin Thorne and
Stefan Daniel!
I’ve really savoured the athlete life but it’s now time to
buckle down and do some school. I know I
will be sitting at my U of Vic lectures wanting to fast-forward to more summer adventures. Luckily my triathlon season
is still alive and kicking with a race in Buffalo, USA up next!
xoxo, ellen
xoxo, ellen
