I’ve decided to start my Santa Rosa 70.3 race report the day before the race. I arrived in Santa Rosa on Thursday, driving over seven hours to get there, check in and go to my hotel. Once I got to my hotel, I just chilled the rest of the night. On Friday, I got up, put my race gear together and dropped my run gear bag at the run transition in Santa Rosa. I came back to my hotel, as I had a phone call to make, and then put my bike in my car to take to the bike transition at Lake Sonoma. That’s when the fun began. When I took my bike out of my car, I realized that my disc brake calipers were rubbing significantly on the disc of my front wheel. It turns out that I must have hit the brake lever when I put my bike in my car. I decided, at first, that I could fix the problem on race morning. I went back to my hotel, chilled for a couple of hours, and then decided that I probably wouldn’t sleep well if I was worrying about my bike, so I drove the half hour back to Lake Sonoma and tried to fix the problem myself, which I wasn’t successful doing Fortunately, there was a mobile bike mechanic there who solved my problem. I spent a little more time on my feet and in the sun than I normally would have, but I had gained peace of mind. There was one other thing about Friday. After I woke up, I had a couple of hard boiled eggs at the hotel. I don’t know if it was coincidence, but about a half an hour later, I began a day spending a lot of time on the toilet. This isn’t something we triathletes talk much about, but getting our bowels cleaned out prior to race day isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Whatever the cause, by the end of the day, I was pretty well cleaned out. I made sure that I’d hydrated well, ate some yogurt, a yam, and rice crackers. As I went to bed, I was thinking about my race day plans, one of which was whether to bring my wetsuit despite the fact that we’d been told the swim would most likely be a non-wetsuit swim. The water had been 76.9 degrees the day before, and the temperature at the lake had been over 90 in the subsequent days. Besides, I was excited to race in my swimskin in preparation for Kona. I was in bed at 8 pm.
I typically write my race report prior to my races, and then edit them after I finish. That’s what I did for this race. I thought it would be fun to not just edit it, but to highlight my edits and show how the actual race compared to my pre-race race report. Tomorrow’s blog will be done this way.
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