HVAC - Pre-race routine!

The crow screaming for its long lost pal outside our tent at 5:50am was probably the sign today was going to be an interesting day…The night before we set up our tent on a slight angle and I may have rolled off the mattress into the tiny space between the tent and the mattress a few times, but other than that it was a great sleep, there was no sleep talking and no bear attacks, we’d made it through the night!! We woke up and quickly cleaned up our campsite, sat down for our bagel, PB and banana hoping it would calm the little bit of excitement and nervousness in our stomachs. We showered in the crazy showers that when turned on, hit the back of our legs, not the top of our heads, we braided our wet hair, dressed in all green, and headed off to the race. We made a quick stop at the gas station for some tea and coffee, then it was time to get pumped up: time for the boom box to come out and the mixed CD entitled :GGB third times the charm - HVAC 2010 Women's Champs. We blasted “How can we be lovers if we can’t be friends” at the top of our lungs, and headed into Hidden Valley, and to our surprise, we were one of the last vehicles to arrive. We turned off the boom box and got in serious race mode, pre-race is no time for smiles, just head nods and salutes. We made the serious trek to the registration table, we signed in, gave a secret smile to Frank and Bethann, and then went to get our bikes and race gear. At the car we pulled on our bright pink leaders jerseys, grabbed our hydration packs, sprayed some OFF on, and I put a quick swipe of sunscreen on my face, then we walked the bikes over to the pre-race meeting. Here I was trying to look tough and fierce and one of the girls from Twisted Sisters was smiling really big at me, then Lisa turned to me and said “Gov you have sunscreen all over your face” ugh great! I was trying to look tough and here I can’t even smear on sunscreen. We listened intently at the pre-race meeting, we had the option of sending one of us off on the race course thirty minutes early, to some this would be an advantage, but to the GGBs this could be disastrous, yes Frank, the path we would travel would be completely marked, but we would have found a way to be lost and alone, ending our adventure racing careers FOREVER. OK, we both looked at each other after the same daydream of being lost and mouthed to each other “WE ARE NOT SPLITTING UP”. A team to our right asked for a pen, which I let them borrow as Frank continued to talk, I think I may have gotten the lip snarl from Lisa when I gave the pen away, so we impatiently tapped our feet until we got the pen back and quickly wrote what Frank yelled out. Our sheet was filled with notes; everything Frank said we wrote down, and for once it MAY have paid off. After the pre-race meeting we had 20 minutes to look at the map, so we sat on the gravel and measured the distance between points, looked up which trail we would take, and then jumped on our bikes. We gathered in the back..BA yelled ”…3…2…1…GO!”