Pre-race Nerves // Swim, Bike, Run

Our family spent the weekend in the Shenandoahs with good friends. My husband found a fabulous cabin for all of us to stay in, and the little boys were able to make exciting "discoveries in the forest" including cardinals, lots of kinds of bugs, a turtle and spiders, and had plenty of rocks and sticks to play with. They also LOVED seeing all of the farm animals, and we stopped at least once to admire new baby horses!

After a traffic filled ride out of town, we were blown away by the scenery of the mountains. (Note: east coast mountains, at least around here, have something in common with most west coast rivers--someone from the opposite coast would consider them hills and streams, respectively. But I digress...) I wish I had a picture to do the scenery justice, but iPhone photos taken from the passenger side window going 65mph don't quite cut it.






After we got to the cabin, my friend and fellow future triathlete Sarah and I went to check in for the race. I didn't want to get back in the car, since we were 20 minutes out of town, but she made the point that with an early start time and four kids under five, the morning could be very unpredictable. I saw the wisdom of her ways, and off we went.

Sarah had had dreams prior to the trip that she got to the course on the morning of the race and found out she wasn't registered. I of course had no such worries. We arrived at check in, I gave them my name and id, and nothing. My information is no where to be found. I'm not registered. My heart started racing, and not I'm a good way. All this work!? All that travel time? All my gear? Agh!

Thankfully, the race director came downstairs and found a list that showed I had tried to register in January, but my credit card had declined. What!?!?!?! The director was incredibly kind, and let me sign up and pay (or rather Sarah came to the rescue and paid!) on the spot. She even let me pay the January fee, which was $40 less than the June fee. Phew. She asked me if I had received any race information or emails. Uh, no. J had updated me on everything and I honestly hadn't thought about it! I'll be more on top of things next go around.








After a fabulous pre-race pasta feed (pasta primavera) courtesy of J, we got our bikes ready, practiced laying out our transition areas, put yankz on my running shoes, chose less nasty flavors of
gu to tape to our bikes, and I tried not to be too cranky. I totally blame nerves for any semi-edginess that I may or may not have been displaying. We also decided that J should be officially upgraded to coach status, since he pumped up our tires, showed us how to lay out our gear, gave us race belts, put the bikes on the roof, etc. He had tons of little tips that really helped on race day.

Note-we forgot our pack and play, so baby N and I slept upstars in the loft. She really was a superstar all weekend, only woke up once in the night, and I slept like a rock. Until 5:30 when we had to wake up that is. We put our bikes on the car, snapped a few pictures, and off we went to the lake. I have to admit to being incredibly nervous on race morning. We met up with a few friends, one unexpectedly, and counted down the minutes to go time!
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