Race Day eve

I would usually wait until closer to the end of the day to make a post like this one. Wait until everything was all done and dusted and sorted out. But this afternoon promises to be a busy one so I thought I would take care of a few tasks now, rather than leaving everything until later. Doing this blog is one of those tasks.

As I currently sit, nothing is sorted yet, but everything is very close to being so. I haven't dropped off my bike, or my running gear or done any of those other things that you usually take care of the day before a race. All that stuff will be done this afternoon.

The decision to wait has really just come down to efficiency. There is a briefing at T2 at 4:30. There is a shuttle from T1 to T2 at 3:30. There is a shuttle from T2 to the hotel at 5:00. You get the gist of it. The plan from here is to go and drop off the bike a bit after 2:00. Then head to the briefings, then head home again. It would be nice to get all that out of the way so I can sit back and relax. But in the end I will be heading out to the briefing at 4:30 one way or another, so I might as well kill two birds with one stone.

Not that this morning has been spent sitting around practicing the art of thumb twiddling. This morning Tim and I rode down to the swim course bright and early to have a look at it at the same time as race start tomorrow. Flat is the term I would use. Nice water temperature to. We swam a bit of the course and it all seems to work fine. There are no big buoys to sight, but you do get a lane rope to follow for the entire course, so that should make navigation fairly straight forward. The swim is pretty enough, staying very shallow for ages with little bits of coral here and there, before suddenly crossing a channel and the bottom disappearing. A little bit off putting. Not to much to write home about with the swim. It was good to see it though. The only drama with the swim came up when Tim got stung by something on the hand. We still aren't entirely sure what it was, and the pain subsided quickish, but it left a nasty welt. Hopefully there isn't to much of that going on tomorrow.

After the swim and a bit of sitting around I headed out for my last bit of training, a bit of a walk/run. It was supposed to be done this afternoon, but since I will be dropping my running gear at T2 this afternoon (including my shoes) doing a run after that could prove difficult.

Other than the small task of still having everything to do this afternoon, the other issue I am currently pondering is the shuttle down to the race start in the morning. Whilst it is great that the shuttle is being provided and I am very glad for the convenience I just hate having to rely on somebody else on race morning as a rule. The issue for me is that there are only two shuttle times, one at 4:00am and one at 5:00am. Transition opens at 4:30 and closes at 6:00 with race start being around 6:30. I am heavily conflicted at to which shuttle to take. The conservative part of me says 4:00. As Daryl rightly points out, if something goes wrong with the 5:00am shuttle we are stuffed, but if something goes wrong with the 4:00am one, then there is a back up. But 4:00am would get us to transition super early and there isn't a lot to do there once you are set up, other than sit and wait. On top of that the 4:00am shuttle requires a very early start to the day, which then brings its own set of issues. To get enough sleep for getting up before 4:00 requires going to bed super early. But getting to sleep so early is not that easy. In fact it is something that I know I struggle with. So that leaves the 5:00am shuttle right? That is true, but other than the issue of the 5:00am shuttle not having a back up, it probably won't make it to T1 until around 5:30. 30 minutes is enough time for me to set up transition, but only if nothing goes wrong. In the end I am a bit conflicted. Deep down I think I know that the 4:00 shuttle is the correct option, but I don't have to be happy about it. In a perfect world there would be a 4:30 shuttle which would work very nicely. But there isn't...

Anyway that dilemma is something that I can figure out for sure later this afternoon. First things first I need to get everything tucked away and ready to go, which I will take care of soon.