The Speed River North Carolina training camp was a good opportunity to get out of the cold (relatively speaking) and get some training in with the group.  Of course I was cooped up on the elliptical, bike and pool for my training so I could have been anywhere however it was good to be hanging out with the River.

I was rooming with Kyle Boorsma, Andrew Nixon and Allan Brett in an apartment style hotel room.  While taking a shower I thought it would be funny to take the label off the hair conditioner bottle and switch it with the hand lotion label, and vice versa.  The labels came of and stuck surprisingly well and no one was the wiser with all the hotel bottles being the same size.

Allan Brett took the first shower and his hair looked ever so moisturized afterwards and I had to tell the girls in the next room what was happening.  After Kyle showered the girls started to comment on how good his and Allan’s hair looked. Nixon doesn’t wash.  The next morning the girls asked me if I used conditioner after my post-workout shower and I thought they were hoping I had forgotten my devious switch.

Later in the day Kyle’s face was a little dry so he went to the bathroom and applied what he thought was lotion onto his face.  Thankfully Mitch Hedberg was playing on Nixon’s computer and I had a reason to laugh uncontrollably hard at Kyle lathering hair conditioner all over his face.  We were about to leave for the mall and I thought the conditioner might make his face really dry once it dried so I let the guys in on the switcheroo.  Kyle then washed his face and took the bottle that said “conditioner” out of the shower and applied that.

When we all met in the lobby to carpool I told the girls about Kyle putting the conditioner on his face, washing it off and then putting lotion on.  They started laughing because after I told them the day before about the swap they switched the labels back thinking I would tell them eventually and then we would have resorted back to the ‘original’ bottles, which would have then, in turn, be the wrong ones again and we would all be putting moisturizing lotion into our hair.  Follow that? good.  So it turns out Kyle did put lotion on his face, wash it off and then apply hair conditioner to his face afterall.  BTW, the conditioner never dried up and he was fine.

The next day our room put a section of a BIG pretzel in the girls toilet when they weren’t there.  Kyle, Allan and I couldn’t not laugh at the site of this log floating in their toilet.  We wondered if one of the four girls would inquire at the site of this.  I think if a guy found said log he would call it out.  But we didn’t hear anything and even as I’m writing this I don’t know if the girl who found the pretzel log mentioned anything.

It snowed on Christmas night in Chapel Hill, the first time since the 1940’s.  There was still snow by the time we got there on the 28th but it was getting pretty warm.  On the bike I mimicked the mile repeats the guys did on the track.

Here is an article that came out a few weeks ago:

Despite Struggles, Canadian Marathoner Keeps His Cool

One week until Kenya.