And tomorrow, we leave

My preparation to leave for Utah has been the complete opposite on the stress scale from my preparation to leave for California. In case you missed that one, 24 hours before I was supposed to leave for California one little dripping pipe behind the toilet turned into one rotted-through-spraying-everywhere-flooding-the-bathroom-and-flowing-down-into-the-basement pipe. The good news was that I was leaving the empty, waterlogged house to the mouse I'd seen the night before. For all I knew I'd be returning to a swamp infested with rodents. Needless to say, it was not a good way to get ready to leave for a race. I wound up packing my bike at like 6:00 that night. I honestly wanted to be in my bed with a book at that time.

Now this time, first of all I got started with the packing early for once. Most of the clothes were packed except for the things that needed to be washed, which I waited to do until after my workouts this morning. I had laid out all of the other stuff to go in the bike box, again waiting to pack the bike box until after I rode this morning. The only setback was that for some reason I woke up at 12:45 last night, and that was pretty much it for sleep. Not a great way to start off, but I decided to use it as an opportunity to get up and get to the gym to swim right at 5, then was on my bike before 6am thanks to spring daylight, and I was done with the workouts before 7am and ready to start the laundry, print the boarding passes (gotta get that A group) pack the bike and finish up with the last little things that needed to be put in the suitcase.

Trip to the bank and the grocery store and I even had time for a haircut. And now... well, that's it. I'm done. It's pretty nice, but it makes me feel like I'm forgetting something since usually I'm very much still packing at this point. Doing stuff ahead of time is pretty nice! And it has even allowed me to finally be excited about the race. I did have to feel a bit like an idiot this morning on my little 16mph super easy ride this morning when a guy on a bike passed me, breathing super hard up a hill, while I was riding my tri bike with my race wheels. I don't know, do you tell people in those cases that you don't normally ride your Zipps around town just to show off? I only wanted to make sure the shifting was working right. He did complement my bike. I didn't want to tell him I got it for free.

What else? Well, I had a lot of friends who raced in Texas yesterday and all of them did awesome, including one of the athletes I coach who took 4th in her age group with a smokin' run time. Also another friend of mine had to make a difficult decision that resulted in his first ever DNF, but as hard as it was to do, it sounds like it was the right thing to do.

Ok, so now no more pool swims before the race. One fairly strenuous bike/run and the rest is easy or just resting. I'm good at those last two. Then I just have to get through a little Ironman race and then I can get all corrupted in Vegas. My 12th Ironman start line and hopefully my 11th Ironman finish. Gotta get a good finish to make up for that annoying DNF last time.

Almost time to fly.