Prerace – Wednesday
Mary and I both woke up early. I had some coffee and pop tarts for breakfast. Then I went down to the beach to do a swim. I swam about 30 minutes “ nice and easy. When I was about 20 minutes in I was swimming along, and all of a sudden felt like I got stung by a bunch of insects on my face. After a split second I realized that I had probably just been stung by a jelly-fish. While I had only planned to swim about 10 more minutes, I swam for the shallow water near shore. Once there I stood up for a few minutes and made sure nothing bad was going to happen. After waiting, the stinging on my face started to subside and I didn’t feel any worse “ so I finished up my swim. Note for next year “ I should probably either try to open water swim in my wet suit more often, or be better about my weights “ I can definitely feel the difference between swimming in my wetsuit and not swimming in it in my shoulders.
The afternoon was uneventful “ Mary and I walked down to the Expo and registered. The volunteer that helped me reminded me a lot of my Grandpa Bowe “ between his glasses, the peachy fuzz beard and his looks¦As we were walking back we stopped and picked up some salt tabs and found a new swimsuit for Mary. After that I put another coat of glue on my new tires, then went and drove the bike course.
It is very flat compared to anything I have ridden. There are a fair number of rollers on the course though. Comparing it to Arizona it œseems to be hillier, mainly due to AZ being a 19 mile false flat, and this has some real rollers. Other than a large bridge nothing to pull you out of the aerobars, and probably nothing to pull you out of the big ring. The main thing making this a very fast course I think is the lack of turns, and the generally good road surface.
After that went for a bike ride on the new tires. It went really well, followed it up with a short run. Might need to remount the front tire “ there is a spot (the valve stem of course) that seems to be a bit noisy “ stick-unstick-stick Annoying.
We went to Carbarra’s Italian grill for dinner. It was OK “ not bad, but not all that memorable.