Marshall, Kevin, and are here in Panama City. The weather is fabulous - dryer than we expected, clear, and sunny. The beach is beautiful - white sand for miles. We're in a huge, 3 bedroom condo on the 15th floor with amazing views of the coastline. The woman who works here said "welcome to paradise" and I think she's right.
As soon as we got here we went to the Ironman expo which is in the parking lot next to our condo. I bought some cool-looking bike shorts and matching top with Ironman Florida on the back. We browsed around and then got our bikes from Velo Express, the company we went with to transport our bikes. We were very happy with the guy who runs Velo - he's meticulous about making sure the bikes arrive safely and charges less than Tribike transport.
Walked our bikes back to the condo and went to get some dinner. Took a look around Panama City - its not ritzy, that's for sure, and in some places is kind of run-down looking but the beaches are amazing.
There are definitely some serious triathletes here. Lots of hard bodies and carbon fiber bikes. I still vascillate between being excited to get going and feeling like I'm in over my head. I guess it's the unknown...I've never gone this distance before or even come close to it. Evan a half-ironman is just that: half an Ironman. When I did the 5430 long course, i remember thinking "there's no way I could double this distance today" but that was 3 months ago and I think we only do what we set out to do. And Saturday, I'm setting out to go long. Reeeeally long.
Tomorrow is a busy day. Breakfast for the athletes at 8:00, Gatorade swim thing at 9:00 (we will actually get in the ocean and swim - VERY nervous about that), registration and check-in 10:00 - 12:00, then get swim bag, bike bag, special needs bike bag, run bag, special needs run bag ready. I'm serious. There's that much to plan!
Then we'll take a spin on our bikes, get my seat adjusted and check my right pedal, get our nutrition plan figured out and go to the mandatory dinner and meeting for all the athletes. Both Kevin and Marshall were here last year and they said the dinner is a really special event. They have some of the elite athletes speak and present inspirational stories of people overcoming incredible odds to finish the race. Marshall said Lynne wanted to run right after the dinner, she was so pumped.
Gotta get to bed - more tomorrow!
2 comments:
Remember what I said. You're overthinking just a tad (and I really mean just a tad, that's not sarcastic). If you REALLY think about it, an Ironman in its own right sounds really fucking crazy when you overthink it. So don't. There are ways to beat it and you've done the training to do so.
Have fun! It sounds like you are doing that too. :)
You are too funny - Marshall and Kevin liked your response. Thanks for being my shrink - you're actually pretty good at it!
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