Nothing New on Race Day

HI. It's Laura.

Happy Fourth of July!

In order to keep to the mantra of nothing new on race day and keeping myself rested, I am practicing my “everything”.

As far workouts, I am tapering. But there is so much more that goes on with triathlon and so much equipment. On Monday I started running down the list of things I will need to either attach to my bike or bring with me on race day.

Starting with what I will be wearing to ride/run in then onto my wetsuit, sneakers, bike shoes, running shoes, heart rate monitor, goggles, swim cap, Vaseline, race belt and the list goes on. So to say I am concerned that I may forget something is not an understatement. I have a couple of lists. One is near my computer and one is in my bedroom and one that I carry with me so I can add things that I think of while I am out and about.

After my jaunt around the West Side yesterday visiting all the race sites, I came home to practice tire changing. With a big ole hiss, I let the air out of my own tires in the middle of the living room. The Dog and the two cats, have never heard this sound before. The cats ran away and the dog tried to protect me from the offending bicycle.

I do not understand why I was nervous about changing my own tires in my own living room but during the whole thing my hands were shaking. Once I got through the entire process, I decided shaky hand were a good thing. On race day if I get flat, I know my hands will be shaky. Scratch that off the list.

Moving on from changing tires it was time to practice the one thing I have not done yet: T1.

Transition one is the transition from swim to bike. "They" say this is an easier transition because you are mostly using your arms during the swim and from bike to run you get lead legs. It is also more difficult to practice because I cannot bring street gear into the pool at the JCC and there is really no body of water to practice coming out of. So I needed to practice on dry land. It just occurred to me, I could have jumped in the shower but that would have just been silly.

It is bad enough I had on my full wet suit, swim cap and goggles on in my kitchen. Why the kitchen? So I could run through the apt to reach the chair in the bedroom where I had my transition area set up as I think it will be set up on race day of course.

I ran through the apt, with the dog chasing me, to the bedroom where I stripped down into my tri suit and donned my helmet, sunglasses, socks, riding shoes and race belt grabbed my pretend indoor bike and pretended to ride off. Then I made believe I rode and came back to the T2 and went off for the run. I have this one down cold. I have been doing it for months. Again, I practiced T1 until I was so sweaty and tired from putting the wetsuit on and off I decided it was time to rest (which I was supposed to be doing in the first place).

I am way more comfortable having practiced the first transition a couple of times. I am happy to know what I believe my transition area will look like even if the animals in the apartment think I am crazy. You should know the dog chased me every time and the cats sat on the sidelines watching the whole thing. If they could talk I am sure they would have nothing good to say about my crazy behavior.

I know now that I have practiced everything that I can in order to prepare for Sunday. I am confident that I have practiced everything. Now I just have to do the race.

3 days to go!

Hope you see you all out there cheering me on.

Play hard!

Laura