My first day in San Diego is off to a great start. I am staying with Erik and Catherine Christenson, who are friends of Emily and Chris. Erik is responsible for getting Emily hooked on bike racing. And Emily is responsible for sucking me into bike racing. The Christensons live in a huge house in Encinitas, CA. I am staying in the "granny flat" which is attached to the house and has its own private entrance and a kitchen. Erik has an espresso maching that is 30 years old. While studying for the Bar, I had started drinking lattes on a consistent basis. In the last week I"ve been detoxing and avoiding any sort of coffee drink, despite having visions of mocha lattes dancing through my head. Well, that plan went out the window this morning when Erik made me a fantastic soy mocha cappuccino. Yum. I'll be having one of those again tomorrow, and the next day...I can detox next week.


My goals while in San Diego:
1) Ride my bike. A lot.
2) But have enough energy left on Sunday to race in the Manhattan Beach Grand Prix.
3) Spend as much time at the beach as possible (when I'm not riding my bike of course)
4) Learn how to surf.
5) Get ride of my horrible bike tan (or as Emily and Chris like to call it, my "dork tan").
6) Sleep!

Today I accomplished goals 1 and 3. This morning I was treated to a great bike ride by my friend Trina's boyfriend, Greg. Greg has lived in San Diego for 10 years, and raced professionally for a few years, so he knows his way around. We started on the Pacific Coast Highway in Encinitas, went south to Torrey Pines, then turned inland (and I can't tell you the rest of the route, because it got too confusing!). I decided it would be a good idea to make up the VO2 intervals I was supposed to do yesterday but skipped. The intervals went really well, especially considering I haven't ridden hard since the beginning of June. After my intervals, Greg and I headed back towards the coast at a nice leisurely pace. Until we hit what Greg called "a really fun road". Then I sucked Greg's wheel for a good 15 minutes and got in another good interval workout. At this rate I'm either going to really be back in shape come Sunday's race, or I'm going to be exhausted!

I made it back to the house after our 3-hour ride and put on the swim suit. Then I hit the beach for a couple hours and went boogie boarding. It took me a while to figure it out, but I finally caught my first wave and rode it all the way into shore! This has to be good practice for that surf lesson I'm going to take later on in the week.

The beach!

Here's proof: a self-portrait of me hanging out on the beach! I really need to get rid of those tan lines.

I love San Diego.