Luray race report - the prequel

Okay, this entire race report may take me awhile so I'm going to write it in stages. I have a lot of random thoughts about the race. Many times, I wonder why I blog. Then there are times like this when I'm really glad I have a forum where I can write some of the things I'm thinking and help make sense of them.

BTW, total aside - as others have answered the recent tag, I realized that I inadvertently left off some great vacation destinations: St. Simon's Island, GA, New Orleans, Cancun, Palm Springs, CA, and Tampa, FL. I've updated my list for.... um, yeah, no reason.

So anyway... onto race weekend!

Friday, I rushed out of work earlier than planned to hit the grocery store. Because I'm pretty sure remote Luray, VA, doesn't have those things. Scouter was going to do it, but after the heinous storms Thursday night, he was really busy with trouble calls at work. As you know, I was a bundle of nerves so it was actually really smart of him to give me something to do.

After grocery shopping, I raced home (excuse the pun) mainly because I had to pee badly from all that hydration I'd been doing, and zipped around the house packing for myself, the kids, the cooler, the car... anything and everything in a frenzy of activity. Then I waited. And waited. And waited some more. Scouter is the absolute worst person to get started on a trip. The kids and I call him "pokey" and several other equally unflattering names leading up to every car adventure. We are used to waiting in the car for at least 15 minutes as he runs back in the house for "one more thing" - repeatedly. This trip was no exception. We even got the bonus round of having to return home for the bike pump.

I settled down a bit once we were finally on the road. There was nothing I could do, after all, besides navigate, read a book, and referee between my children. And nap a little.

I didn't do a great job on the navigation front and we took a slight detour through Luray to get to our cabin in Stanley, VA. It actually worked out well though as I got a "lay of the land." Our cabin was right off the bike route, about five miles from Lake Arrowhead.

We unpacked the unbelievable amount of crap we'd brought along and got settled in our cabin. I knew the place was small from pictures on the website, but it was much cuter and brighter than I expected it to be. It was relatively new - entries in the guest log started sometime in 2006 - and well equipped. Taz first flipped out over the fact that the house had a computer game player (I'm not sure which one), then the even bigger excitement was that it had the Disney channel. High School Musical II debuted Friday night, don'tcha know, and both kids were way jacked to see it.

TriGirl Megan arrived shortly thereafter. She was on her own for the race and we were fortunate to have her join us. It helped me tremendously to have someone experiencing the same anxiety to obsess with.

Megan and I headed out to Lake Arrowhead to check out the site. We were amazed to see so many people pre-swimming, riding, and/or running the event. They seemed pretty hard-core. We talked with one woman who participated in the test ride the weekend before, and she warned us about the steep hill at the end of the bike leg. She said she hit 40 mph going down it on the way out, then climbed it in granny gear, standing, on the return. Uh oh. I had been worried about the swim. Now I started worrying about the bike too - especially once we drove the hill. We also saw one of Scouter's fraternity brothers, Brad, who was doing the race. He warned us that the run course was hilly. Great.

Next we went to packet pickup which was in downtown Luray. We briefly checked out the concert that was going on in conjunction with race weekend. The venue was very cute - a secluded spot by the river with a jazz band and box meals. We picked up our packets and were delighted to discover that our numbers were close, so we would be near each other in transition.

It didn't work out to meet TriGirls for dinner, so we headed back to the cabin. Scouter's brother Brent had arrived by then and they were chilling with some beers when we returned. Scouter fired up the grill and made a delicious pork tenderloin, accompanied by potato salad and tossed salad, plus spaghetti noodles for some extra carbo loading and a little wine to settle our nerves. The kids were completely absorbed with High School Musical so we had a nice relaxed dinner with actual adult conversation.

I couldn't go to sleep until I put the kids to bed after the big show ended at 10:00, which was a bit later than I had hoped. I slept fairly well until about 4 a.m. when I awoke and started worrying in earnest. I tossed and turned for the rest of the night, finally arising at 6 a.m. to begin race day preparations. My normal pre-race or long training breakfast did not work out. I was so nervous that I could only eat about three bites. Our cute little cabin was a sound magnifier, but the kids managed to sleep through it.

Once we arrived at the race site, things started moving quickly. We pumped tires, went to body marking, picked up timing chips, and set up our transition areas with little time to spare. Before I knew it, and way before I was ready, Megan and I found ourselves clustered with our TriGirl buddies Cyndi, Amanda, Teresa, Aimee, and Jill on the little beach by the lake...