Monday, March 31, 2008

I see a tiny little light. It's getting bigger and going choo-choo...

Well, here we are. Lavaman is a week away. I'm on a plane for Hawaii Thursday morning.

My foot is okay, most days, though I expect to be limping for a while when I get back. Fundraising is done, we made it through final prep and we've been assured that our bikes are being fed and cared for properly on their journey to Kona.

Obviously, I'll be writing up a full race report after the trip, but I thought I should catch up a little first.

So the training wrap-up:

I ran the practice tri and pulled a decent time, 1:17:04. I finished 4th on the team, even with it being my first run in 6 weeks or so. Sure, I could barely walk for the week afterward, but that's okay. Final prep was last Saturday. We did the traditional 2 miler, from the Shores to the Cove and back. It took about an hour, so we could maybe have pushed a little harder, but it wasn't a race. The water was cold and the kelp was up. All in all, very Pac Grovey. At one point, as I was trying to untangle myself from the weeds, I looked over and realized that a sea lion was watching me from about 8 feet away. We saw dolphins the week before. The sea lion followed me briefly and I had a little silly moment where I had to wonder if I could still race through plantar fasciitis and a sea lion bite.

So there it is, I'm not going to run at all until race day and I'm taking my time handling everything else.

Race weekend impressions (forecasting):

I'm really looking forward to this weekend, and not just for the race. It'll be my first time in Hawaii as well, so everything will be in some way new. How often does that happen? On top of that, I get to see race weekend from the experienced perspective instead of the wide-eyed newbie and that means not only having some idea what to expect from race morning, but how to handle the TNT functions like the course previews and the pasta party and all that. Maybe I'll even make it to the victory party this time. Old friends and Jack Daniel's kept me away from it at Pac Grove. I'll even get to see my bike again. God, I'm such a geek.

Last thing to say at this point is that I will try not to hold the Aloha Airlines goat rodeo against the state of Hawaii, though that will be far easier if Capital One decides to refund my ticket price. Turns out that it's hard to get to Hawaii on four days' notice. Who would'a thunk it?

That's it for now. I'll tell you all about it when I get back.

1 comment:

Ben said...

Good luck in Hawaii dude. See you at Wildflower. Uncle Jack and I will wait for you at the finish line!