Donna Phelan's Blog

I’ve been here in Krabi now for just about 6 weeks. Every week is pretty much the same – lots of eating, sleeping and training – but for some reason, last week seemed to have more strange happenings than usual.

In the middle of the week, Christine and I went grocery shopping and were looking for a cab to take home. Only 2km but with heavy groceries and tired legs, I obey the rule – “Don’t walk when you can drive, Don’t stand when you can sit, Don’t sit when you can lie down”. So we hailed down a truck/bus/taxi on the side of the road and said “Tawanthai Hotel”? A quick nod of the head and we were in the back of the pick-up truck with a couple of other passengers. Well, instead of turning onto our usual road, the truck kept going and going and going. After a number of stops, and 30min later, we’re in Krabi Town in front of the “Thai Hotel” with the driver waiting for us to hop out. Umm, I don’t think so. Well, to make a long story short, our usual 2k drive home turned into an hour long scenic tour….not what we were looking for in between training sessions, but one for the memory books I suppose.

With Christine and Beck, on one of our usual 2km grocery excursions.

The next day, a rainstorm with thunder and lightning blew through Krabi in the late afternoon. By 7pm, power was out although the hotel manager assured us it would last only 10min. By 9pm, still without power and A/C, sleeping was impossible. After finishing my book by candle light, I decided to chip away at the ice cave that had gradually become my freezer over the last few weeks. Once my defrosting mission was complete, by 10pm I went to bed with a large chunk of ice (the remnants of an ice pack from my freezer) lying on my stomach. I somehow slept like this until 11pm when the beautiful sound of the A/C whirring back to life signaled that our sauna session was finally over.

The next day was Saturday, and we had one of our longer and harder days of training. By 5pm most of us were feeling like zombies, but we still had a short run to do before calling it a day. Wongstar must have been in a hurry because she was the first out of the change room and into her running shoes. A few minutes later she comes back in and hauls off her loose tank top, “Oops, forgot my sports bra”. Heehee.

Run was done and we were all getting ready to head home. I was waiting for Tereza, and she starts to walk away from the pool with her bike helmet on. Umm, aren’t you going to take your bike with you? It might be a little faster that way. Heehee.

To finish off the week, one of the hotel kittens who had gone MIA a couple of weeks ago suddenly reappeared. No sign of the other 3 from the litter, so we’re keeping a close eye on this 3 week old bundle of fluff. Beck’s letting it live part time in her room until it’s wobbly little legs aren’t so wobbly anymore.

One of the good things about having camp in Thailand is that food is quite good and very cheap to buy. You can buy a watermelon on the side of the road for a dollar, chicken on a stick for 75 cents, and a container of rice for 30 cents. Of course, it’s easy when you know what you’re buying. The difficult part comes at the supermarket – analyzing packages of food labelled in a foreign alphabet is like buying a grab bag and hoping you get something good inside! Sometimes it’s a good surprise and other times, well, not so much.

There’s a restaurant about 40min by bike from the hotel, and I often wonder if something was lost in translation when they named it. The sign says “Cabbages and Condoms”…Did they mean “Cabbages and Carrots”? Cabbage for dinner and a surprise for dessert? Hmmm, not sure I’ll be trying that place anytime soon.

Last night we went to the street market in Krabi Town for dinner. Lots of different stalls selling many different types of food, and cheaper than you could make it yourself I’m sure. I give a thumbs up to the BBQ chicken skewers. Tereza’s Pad Thai wasn’t bad either. Hiro and Maki’s quail eggs….umm, not so much.

On Sunday afternoon, Alex and his wife Ellen took a bunch of us on a boat trip to Chicken Island, about 25min by boat from Ao Nang beach. We had a great time – eating lunch on the island, swimming and lazing around on the beach. Beck, Jocelyn, Amy and I found a nice shady spot on the beach, right next to a “Tsunami Hazard Zone” sign. Yikes, glad I wasn’t around here a few years back.

We headed back to Ao Nang in the late afternoon, not quite as smooth sailing as in the morning since the wind and driver’s speed seemed to have picked up. Unfortunately, Ellen and I were on the side of the boat receiving most of the spray and resorted to wearing our goggles until we got back to shore. Next to me, Beck hid under a towel and emerged when the boat’s motor turned off and we anchored at shore. The girls headed into Ao Nang for massages while the boys drank beer, and then we had an awesome dinner near the beach. Thanks Alex and Ellen for an amazing day!

Just when the excitement from our Chicken Island adventure died down, it seemed we needed some more entertainment around the Tawanthai Hotel. Yesterday afternoon, as we were heading home from a bike ride, Beck and I noticed a tiny kitten hiding under some abandoned stalls. Well, you can guess what happens when two cat lovers come across an abandoned kitten looking for food and some TLC. I rode home with the cat tucked inside the front of my jersey, we cleaned him up, fed him some dinner, and off he went to Christine’s room for the night. He spent the morning in my room, and the afternoon in Beck’s. This lucky little Tiger just landed in three laps of luxury.

So I’ve been here in Krabi just over a week now….very happy to be back in training camp, back with my old team mates and getting to know the new ones. It’s funny how after a week together you feel like you’ve known each other your whole life. One big happy family.:-)

I’m loving the hot 40+ degree weather here everyday, swimming 50m instead of 25yds like I do back home, and biking 4+ hrs while seeing only 1 traffic light. I also love the cheap $9 massages, and the watermelon and cocunut that cost less than a dollar on the side of the road. The one thing I’m not a big fan of are the dogs that seem to appear out of nowhere in every size, shape and colour. I’ve been called crazy but I swear the white ones are the ‘chasers’. I take off in a sprint whenever I see one to avoid having the seat of my pants torn off!

I’ll get around to posting more pics later, but here’s one of the four elephants who live about 100m down the road – Elvin, Ellie, Edith and Ernie. For the next 2 months I figure they deserve to have names…

And this is Thai-Bo, the cute hotel cat who I’ve been known to feed on occassion…he’s a little scrawny so I’m helping him beef up a bit.

More pics coming in my next blog….

Today was my last run along the coast and my last cold dip in the Pacific Ocean for a couple of months. Tomorrow I head off to camp in Thailand which makes today “packing day” – trying to fit everything I need for the next couple of months into a small suitcase and throwing out things at the last minute that don’t fit. I often wish I had a bottomless suitcase into which I’d stuff all the cereal, Pringles, books and clean clothes I could fit! One of my cats tried to squeeze in amongst my clothes, but I had to tell him sadly that he wouldn’t fit. Maybe next time.

More pics to come in a few days from Singapore and Thailand…

Tomorrow, February 2nd, is GroundHog Day in the US and Canada. If Mr.Groundhog pokes his head out of his burrow and sees his shadow, he will retreat back into his burrow signifying 6 more weeks of winter. If he doesn’t see his shadow, he will leave the burrow, signifying that spring is just around the corner.

Whether Mr.Groundhog sees his shadow tomorrow or not, I am very happy to be ending my winter in a couple of weeks by heading off to camp in warm, sunny Thailand.

One GroundHog Day in particular stands out in my memory. It was 02/02/02 and I was leaving home and leaving my job as a PT in Canada to head to camp in Brazil for the first time. I remember thinking about the significance of that particular date….wondering if I would be returning back home to my job and back to winter if things didn’t work out….or if spring was just around the corner with new pastures to explore.

I’ve had many early springs since then and also a few forced winters in between. But winter makes you appreciate spring, and I am very happy to have the opportunity once again to head off to camp in a couple of weeks. Thank you Mr.Groundhog for not seeing your shadow in ’02.

I do hope for the sake of all North Americans who put their faith in Mr.Groundhog that he doesn’t see his shadow tomorrow, but instead leaves his burrow searching for spring flowers and new pastures.

Today is the third of 5 days of predicted rain in a row for San Diego. So to keep myself from bouncing off the walls when I’m not training, I’ve returned to being a part-time book worm.

The most recent book I’ve finished is “We Might As Well Win” by Johan Bruyneel (Lance Armstrong’s coach for those who have been living under a log for the last ten years). With all the recent talk about our upcoming training camp, there were a few sections that stuck in my head and made me realize how excited I am about heading back to camp.

“Gathering the team for our first training camp of the year, is an occasion not of hope but, more accurately, of optimism : the entire season lies before us – ours for the taking if we are willing to work hard enough, and think enough, and sacrifice enough.
The loss is in the past, which can not be changed. The win – it still lies up ahead, waiting for us, and it will stay there until we figure out how to take it.”

And before stage 16 of the 2007 Tour, Johan says to Levi and Alberto, ” ‘We must ride in such a way that if we do not win, we lose. To have a chance at the top step, we have to be willing to never take one step off the podium.’ I was telling them that to take the yellow jersey they had to be willing to ride so hard it would endanger their podium spots. All or nothing. Willing to risk losing to win.”

Ok, time to hop on the windtrainer and think about which book I’ll start next!

I know a lot of people make New Year’s resolutions to stop drinking, give up junk food, get to the gym more often, lose weight, etc, etc. Well, I don’t drink, I don’t have a sweet tooth (cereal doesn’t count), I already live at the gym/pool, and coach would have a cow if I went on a weight-loss program.

But I do have a bit of a “salty tooth”. I bring the saying “Once you pop (a can of Pringles), you just can’t stop” to life, and I can easily devour a jar of pickles, salsa or pickled beet in less time than it takes to open the jar.

So for my New Year’s Resolution, I decided I would send the Pringles on a little sabatical, and put a healthy twist on my “salty tooth”. It all started Christmas Day when my father-n-law gave me a jar of his homemade pickles. I sampled one and then the rest were history…unfortunately not making it to Christmas dinner. So I took his pickle recipe and decided to try my hand as a Pickle Maker. Put all the ingredients together in a pot, boil it for 4 minutes, cut the cucumbers and add the pickle juice. How difficult can that be?

Well, aside from crying my eyes out while I was cutting the onions (I’ll use goggles the next time), my pickle experiment didn’t turn out too badly. The only problem was that I devoured both jars as soon as they were done. So now I’m heading back to the grocery store for more ingredients….covering my eyes while I walk past the Pringle aisle.

Ahh, sunny and 70 degrees in San Diego today…..Christmas as it should be.:-)

So in between all my Christmas baking, pie making, cleaning and decorating I thought I’d write a Christmas blog. Hahaha. Well it sounded like a good opening for a blog. But despite 4 months at home I am still not what you would call domesticated. I guess my talents lie elsewhere.;-)

But I do love Christmas, and I’m always thankful at this time of year for all of the special people in my life, including my team mates, coach and Alex for giving me the opportunities that I’ve had over the last year. THANK YOU. Looking forward to the New Year, and Best Wishes to everyone in 2010!