Ironman St. George 2010: day 3

4/30

Ok here we are the day before the race and there are lots of things to do. After a leisurely morning with lots of coffee (eeek it was 44 degrees this morning!) and a nice breakfast we headed to the reservoir to check our bikes in and possibly do a swim. When we got to Sandy hollow the wind was blowing at about 30 mph and it was freezing! The bikes were being blown all over the bike racks and trying to walk around was very challenging, but the view was truly amazing. I finally got up the courage to take a swim with one of my other athletes as I needed to check out my "skull cap" (this is to keep your head warm) and my little booties (to hopefully keep my feet warm) as I hadn't worn either of them in the water yet. There were white caps and "antarctic" looking birds as well as a huge rock formation in the middle of the water. The initial frigidness" of the water took my breath away. It felt something like when you drink a slurpee too fast and get brain freeze only on the reverse as it was from the outside in. Anyway after a few min I couldn't feel my face or my hands but it will be doable. I guess you face the challenge on race day because you have no choice. You find a way to endure it and that's what it's all about. We dropped off all of our gear and had a nice early dinner and are now sitting in the hotel basically "killing time" until the race. It's hard to not think of what we will endure tomorrow as well as the intense soreness that will follow but it's coming whether we are ready or not. We will get up at 3:30 to be ready to take a shuttle between 4:30 and 5:30 out to the reservoir as no cars are allowed out there. There we will check our bikes, gear bags and apply lots of "lube" to get our wetsuits on and await the 7 am mass swim start. Yes that's right, 2500 people all at once will start frantically swimming with the sound of a cannon. And the race begins...........