I woke up twice last night, once at about 1:30am and once around 3:30am. I freaked out because there lights outside my window and I thought it was the sun coming up. It was not race morning, however, I did not want to sleep in too late. Got up at 6:30am and took a LONG shower, and stretched out. Time for another swim. This morning Mike opted not to swim, but that is his strong suit, so he is not as worried as I am. The water was more calm today than the day before, and I felt more comfortable, which was good. Hopefully by the time I hit the water tomorrow morning I will be very comfortable. Went about 50 yds further out than yesterday, so 500 yds. Met a few random people out in the water and we had a nice chat before swimming back in. Nice chat you say??? Well when you are in a wetsuit + salt water = pretty easy to chat.
Afterwards, I came back upstairs, ate some food real quick, and then Mike and I got geared up for our bike ride. The plan was to ride from the condo to St. Andrews State Park and back, about 10 miles. Mike had his SRAM S60 in the front and disc cover in the back. He got dropped real quick. He was getting blown all over the road. So when we got back, he switched to his stock wheels and we went out for a short 15 minute ride, and he was much more comfortable and able to stay in aero the entire ride. The ride on the way out was awesome because it was a strong tailwind. I think we were pushing 90-100 watts and going almost 21 mph on the bike, but coming back we were probably 250 watts and only going 17 mph. Kinda ridiculous.
Now that the bikes were tuned up and tested, we came back and packed our T1 and T2 bags. From the condo, we headed back down to the race site (which is only a quarter mile away = bi-winning) with the bikes and the bags. I would like to say something at this point. I love our condo that we are staying at, except for the elevators. I don't know how much they are raking in a year in profits, but they need to add one more elevator bank and then speed up the elevators they already have. When we went down to drop everything off, it took us 15 minutes just to get an elevator to go down. If we did not have all the stuff we would have taken the steps down.
Lunchtime! Went to Liza's Kitchen. Great place to eat, good prices, BIG sandwiches and my last beer before the race (you can't say no to $2 Yuenglings!). Gotta get those carbs in. We also took the back route so that Melissa can drive between areas without getting stuck in race day traffic. They are all staking out at Hammerhead Fred's for the run.
Came back to the venue so that I could finally buy some swag for the race. I only spent $60, I was pretty proud of myself. Gotta get that finisher jacket on Sunday morning. Met up with Wes and Dee Dee at the venue, and they told me that they were meeting with a whole bunch of people from the blogger community. I met up with CJ, Mandy, Colleen and Laura, and some other people who are new to me in the blogging community (sorry I forgot your names!!!!) It was kind of like going on a blind date, because we all know each other from the blogging community, but most of us have not met in person. I am glad that we were all able to meet up. I did not get any of their phone numbers to meet up after the race, but if we see each other, great, and if not, I am sure we will hear about the post race festivities on everyone's blogs.
I came back and started working on the Day 1 blog post and got the rest of my stuff ready for the race tomorrow before we started cooking dinner. I also packed because our checkout time is at 10am on Sunday morning = dumb. Melissa is going to try to call during the day tomorrow for an late checkout if that is possible. Mike's parents are in town to watch his Ironman and so they had dinner with us. His parents are pretty cool. Now I am sitting here composing this blog post and thinking about the next 24 hours of my life. It is not the race, but the journey to get here. Think about this like a wonderfully composed sentence with an exclamation point. Tomorrow is the exclamation point. The past year is the entire sentence. I can't believe that is my analogy, as I was horrible with grammar and literature in school.
Ok off to stretch and then head to bed. Till tomorrow...
Ironman Live Tracking Site
Race #973
1 comment:
Looks like things are moving along great!
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