Pre-Race Report

Friday morning, May 20th, was like any other day. I woke up, grabbed some breakfast, and headed to the pool. I was a bit early and I didn't wait for the rest of the team to get ready to swim because I had a long swim on my agenda. I planned on cranking out 7-9000 meters in preparation for my open water swimming races. The water was the same temperature as always at the OTC when I dove in and started my first of six 1500 meter swims. My goal was finish all 6 or stop at 2 hours, which ever came first...I am thankful that my swimming skills are going down hill...so 2 hours rolled around right as I was finishing 1000 meters of the last 1500...darn, I decided to get out:).
Shower, change, grab some more food, and then I headed back to my room to do last minute packing, grab my bags and lug my huge bike box down to the lobby. At 11am, Matt, Manny, Jasmine and I were all picked up by the OTC shuttle and driven to the airport to catch our 1pm flight to Phoenix, Arizona.
Of course we chilled in the COS airport for over an hour because leaving the OTC 2 hours before a flight is totally unnecessary! But I would have waited twice that long if it would have meant our next flight was on a different plane. We all boarded a small twin prop plane on the tarmac in COS. It was a bit after noon on a warm, sunny day and the flight had only about 30 minutes of fly time. Before the doors even closed for taxi and take-off, it was a bit warm in the cabin. Then the doors closed, we pushed back, started taxiing...and the air flow through the overhead vents just wasn't doing it's job! In a word, it was STIFLING! This flight was the most miserable experience I have ever had...everyone on the plane would agree too...and everyone on the plane was voicing this opinion to the one flight attendant! The guy next to me was sweating buckets off his head...a lady in the back used 3 air sick bags...I got off the plane with out a single dry spot on my entire outfit. WOW...I am just keeping my fingers crossed that I NEVER see that plane again!
After cooling off in the Denver airport, we caught our connecting flight to Phoenix...which was very uneventful! All the bikes and luggage arrived and we loaded then into the hotel van and headed off into the HOT, DRY, DESERT! Friday's high temperature in the area was only about 107 degrees...Saturday was predicted to be a bit higher....but Sunday was the kicker with an estimated high of 111 degrees (by-the-way: Sunday was the day of our race!) At the hotel we met up with the rest of the Under 23 team (Cate, Jarrod and Jenna) and headed for some dinner in town followed by a bit of bike building in the hallway.
Saturday was the race prep day...a little bit of everything to loosen up and a race meeting in the afternoon. In the morning we rode our bikes over to the race course (the bike course was a 4 mile loop that we rode 6 times) and went around the whole thing once before practicing the technical parts and doing some transitions. Not a single tree was on this course, no buildings to give shade, just long, hot stretches of black pavement!
We rode back to the hotel, grabbed our swim stuff and drove over to a beautiful, high-class athletic training facility...they had Mia Hamm's locker and a bunch of big baseball stars private parking spaces...the pool was nothing spectacular, but all we needed was water and walls!
While we were spending some time relaxing in the hotel after swimming, Lauren Lindquist stopped by to talk race strategy with Coach Denny and I...I was just so excited to actually be talking about one of my favorite day-dreams being actually used in a race: Barb and I working together on the bike, since we both get out of the water way in front, to build a big lead on the rest of the racers!
Around 2:30ish, Jasmine (my roomie for the weekend) and I headed out for a short jog around the hotel...Good Idea: know where your hotel is located before starting run; Bad Idea: go on a run in 105+ degrees without knowing where you are or what street your hotel is on! Our 20-30 minute jog turned into a 45 minute quest for AC and water! We eventually found the hotel and guzzled a gallon of water ASAP!
We drove back to the place with the pool for the pre-race meeting...nothing of extreme importance happened there...I did get my race numbers: 114 and see a bunch of friends who were also racing the next day. The rest of the afternoon involved a big team dinner at UNO's and getting our race bags packed back at the hotel.
Sleep came easy around 10:30pm...our alarm was set for 7am so we had plenty of time in the morning to grab some b-fast in the hotel lobby and then ride our bikes over to the race site. Race Report will be in the next blog:)