Pre-Race Thoughts #1

So I've been thinking about writing this post for a few days now and I've been stalling because I don't know what to say. Honestly I think it's going to make more sense for me to maybe do a few shorter posts as the weekend goes on.

A few paragraphs of digression.....

Monday Mark and I went to Gunther's for their annual "One More Tri" party. Which consisted of a swim, T1 with bagels, coffee, cookies, bike, T2 again with food, run and then grilling and potluck. It was good for me training wise but killed me confidence since I was WELL in the back of all three elements. Which I suppose is destined to happen when the group consists of a bunch of elites (including Cathy Yndestad) and top age groupers. It was a lot of fun but like I said...a little rough to be on the tail end all day. Here's a pick of the group before we took off on our ride. Go me, dropped my chain right off the bat in front of everyone. Smooth... :-P

That afternoon we were at mom's house for Lily's 10th birthday. We gave her tickets to come with us and Deb to a Vikings game. She was super happy and it was a super cheap gift for us :)

I had a big crappy day about coming to this race again on Wednesday but I'm fighting as best I can to find a positive attitude. Alex hosted a great Pasta Party for everyone attending as a racer, volunteer or spectator. Everyone was asking how I was feeling and I passed it off as "good, just nervous" when in actuality it was more like "totally freaked out, crabby, unsure"

What's funny is after having a negative and sappy day thinking about the race, I went out for my training run that night and while listening to my "rough day" music, managed to hear my inner positive me telling me (in summary) that everything will be fine.

This morning before Mark and I left to drive to Madison, I was packing my stuff and reading through all the "good luck" comments, emails, etc I've been getting from people and trying to feed off that energy. I think it helped.

I really haven't been feeling the nerves until we got into Madison and rounded the Capitol to our hotel. Then my stomach did a few flips. It was really funny when we pulled into the hotel parking garage and found a spot close to the elevator....we pulled in, looked up and saw that we parked in spot #68. Which just happens to be my race number. Still can't figure out how I got that low of a number :)

So we're just vegged out in the hotel for the night. ($200 a night mind you) doing computer stuff and waiting for our pizza to show up. Tomorrow is athlete check in, see the merchandise area ($$$$) and then the welcome dinner and meeting in the evening.