5:32 am - Lisa picked me up and we packed up the bikes, we had all our gear ready to go, and we were very giddy and excited! We chatted the whole way there, no radio was needed, we talked about strategy: a) we will not follow other teams, because usually they are wrong, b) if someone is complaining, ignore them and cross your fingers they will stop complaining because they think you can not hear them, c) we will not be friendly or help other teams, because last race no one was friendly to us, until after the race and d) we will do anything and take as long as necessary, but we will FINISH!
8:33 am - We arrive at the parking lot to see that many team have also just arrived and everyone is unloading their gear and starring down each others legs and bikes. We must wipe away our smiles and put on our evil eyes. We are in race mode now. A friendly competitor comes over and tells us it might be easier to back our car down to the TA, instead of walking everything there. We snarl our lips and say, no we are fine, we walked our bikes down "LAST YEAR!". We wanted him to know we had been here before!...(poor guy, he was just trying to help and he went back to his car with a sad Eyeore type waddle) this was no time for socializing mister!
8:48 am - It takes us two trips to walk everything down, yes, it might have been easier to back the car in, but we couldn't take a competitors advice (that was rule a.) We set up our gear a little bit away from the TA bars on some rocks by a bench. We laid everything out and this year it seemed like we actually had gear to set up. Last year we were just looking around thinking "what is everyone setting up??". This year we had to lay out our bikes, helmets, biking gloves, etc., and then our running gear. We weren't sure which was going to be first: the bike leg or the run leg, so we had to be set up for both.
9:03 am - Lisa debates over whether or not to get the tarp in the car to cover our gear incase it rains. After much debate, and no help from me on the decision (I really didn’t think it would rain), she went to get the tarp. While she was gone the other female teams pounced on me! They saw me alone and they came up and tried to be overly friendly, "can you take our picture", "isn't it a lovely day"…Lisa was coming back and I saw her give me the lip snarl and the left evil eye squint... she is probably thinking "K, why are you being friendly to the other teams" but once Lisa came back they quickly scurried away!
9:15 am - Pre-race meeting. At the pre-race meeting it was announced that the bike leg would be first! A 13 mile bike ride, and we went over the map and the rules in detail. Then he told us following the bike leg would be a 5 mile trail run. YES we thought! The bike first would be good for us because running 5 miles would be as easy as cake…
Of course we thought wrong...
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