Wednesday I had off, so I went to the beach with my uncle during the day. We went to the same beach as when my cousin was here, but this time it was a lot nicer since it wasn’t six in the morning. There were more people on the beach, and I think most of them were tourists. At one point a fishing boat came right up on the beach to unload a couple tourists. The locals were not really happy about this and it lead to a nice little bickering session about the rights of a fisherman versus the rights of a sea bather. I could only understand a bit, but there were a few good shots that made onlookers laugh, so of course not to look out of place, I laughed as well. During this time of the day there were a lot of little shops and bars open along the beach, and you could really tell you were in the tourist area of the island, plus the abundance of white people kind of gave it away too. We spent a couple hours at the beach, just enough time to ‘blacken up my skin’ then we headed back home. The sun really sucked the energy out of me, so I took a nice little nap once we got back.
On Monday we had gone grocery shopping and I picked up some things to make some pizza later on in the week. So after my nap I headed straight to the kitchen to do a little damage. With my recipe in hand I was ready to make the most amazing supper ever! I could tell my uncle was a little worried about me working in his kitchen, because every five minutes he would come in to see how I was doing. I was totally ok with this because it seemed like ever five minutes I needed his help with something. I ended up making the dough a little too sticky so some adjustments were needed. I’m really glad that I lift weights because I used every single muscle in my hands and my arms to knead that dough! When I finally got the consistency right, it was time to work my topping magic. I tried to work from memory to make my favourite tropical chicken pizza from Boston Pizza’s. I thought this one would be very fitting given my current location. I think my version was a little bit off though, because it was WAY better then any BP’s pizza! I ended up making enough dough for three pizzas, so this was only one of my three creations. The next was a meat lovers that would put Tumbler’s pizza to shame. With three inches of meat, one piece had enough protein in it for a week. The last one didn’t get as much thought as the others though, it was called the What Ever Is Left pizza, but it still tasted pretty good.
This was the first real time I had spent in the kitchen since I got here and it was actually pretty fun. My uncle had been trying to teach me to cook some Trinidad food, but all I seemed to do was burn it. I think the pizza making was a nice little redemption for me, and I was able to show my family that ‘burn’ wasn’t the only flavour I knew.
On Thursday I was back to the track. I got there a little late, and when I did, the coach kind of seemed a little mad, I got straight into my warm up so I could catch up with everyone. As I came close to the end of my warm up some of the boys started their workout. I wasn’t too sure what was going on so I sort of just watched for a bit. I guess some of the boys were misbehaving before I got there, and now they were being punished. They were doing the fartlek that we did on Monday, but anytime their 100 meter sprint wasn’t fast enough, they would have to start all over again. It didn’t look like they were having fun at all, so I just took my time warming up and once they were done with their punishment they were ready to start the real workout. I had been sent a workout from back home, so once the coach had cooled off a little bit, I let him know. He split the group up and half the boys did the same workout as me, and the others had some shorter work to do. 300-300-300 was the workout, full out with a full recovery. Only one of the guys in my group had to run the fartlek, so the rest of them were fresh and ready to go for the workout. We didn’t waste anytime getting into the workout, *BEEP* 45.00 on the first rep. I had forgot to write down how fast my coach wanted these to be, but 45 seemed good, and I would just try to go faster for the next two to make it a little more challenging. The guys really don’t like getting beat by a girl and I had noticed that a couple of them like to just linger behind me for the first half of a run, then pass me at the very end. I remembered this for the next rep and after 200 meters I turned it on, a kicked it hard all the way to the end, *BEEP* 44.00. When we finished all the could say was ‘what was dat’. I told them to stop being little girls and run the whole thing, not just the last half. So on the last one I knew they would try to bring it on a little stronger then the first two. I wasn’t feeling tired at all, and all I wanted to do was beat the boys. Right off the start we were all going our hardest. At first I was trying too hard and I could feel that my whole body was tight, so I just tried to relax and let my power do all the work. I kept my knees coming high, relaxed my shoulders and just reacted quick off the ground. It seemed to work because I could feel myself slowly pull away from the boys down the home stretch, *BEEP* 44.40. I finished two steps ahead of the boys, and it sure felt good. The coach said I looked really relaxed, but still very powerful, which is what I have been trying to work on this whole time. It seems like all I needed was a couple boys chasing me to finally get it right.
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