Black Fly Weekend

My triathlon team and I headed north on Friday afternoon for what ended up to be one amazing weekend. We stayed at the Black Bear Lodge with a whole bunch of Bradfords who were having a family reunion. There had to be over 100 of them all wearing lanyards - which made them easy to identify and avoid. ;-)

Waterville Valley is a great place to hang out for the weekend. The swim was in a small pond and was only .25 miles. It rained buckets during the race and I was chilled right through because it was only about 70 degrees. Every stitch of clothes that I had to put on after I got out of the water was soaked through even before I got my wetsuit on. Fortunately our hotel was only a few hundred yards away from transition and after my swim - once I started shivering uncontrollably - I bailed like a little girl and went to the room to change into something dry.

I came in first in the swim for my all female relay division and second out of all relayers. That makes me two for two this year. No where to go but down.

Our team came in 3rd place in our all female division and we were thrilled. After we had all changed into dry clothes and the rain slowed to a drizzle we went back to the race location to eat and have a post race massage. I will definitely do this race again, but as a solo participant next year along side my team.

That night we had a great dinner out at the Wild Coyote restaurant. My meal was seared scallops, black truffle mashed potatoes, asparagus and roasted squash all with a scallop au jus. It had to be in my top 10 meals ever. I highly recommend the restaurant. After dinner we went back to our room to watch the Italian Job and enjoy some Strawberry and Cherry organic beers and hit the sack.

We slept in until 8:00 am on Sunday (a luxury for triathletes on a race weeked) and then had breakfast and headed out for an adventure. We rented mountain bikes and took the ski lift up and up and up and up. I have never mountain biked before - but WOW, WOW, WOW. I had way too much fun careening down the mountain, splashing through the mud puddles, avoiding trees, etc. I only drew blood once and was ready to go up and do it again if we had more time. I think I won the award for the muddiest bike returned to the rental shop that day. All the rain made for a lot of mud on the trail. At first I tried to avoid it to no avail, so I just embraced it and succeeded mightily.