What a weekend! The short report: Lake Montclair was great. Everybody finished, everybody was smiling. But you want details, I'm sure. Here they come. Five posts: pre-race, swim, bike, run and post-race. Get comfy... this'll be a while.
Pre-Race:
Pre-race actually began on Saturday with pre-registration and packet pickup. Pat and I zoomed down to the pickup location, where we hadn't even gotten into the door when things got good: my team's assistant swim coach was outside the school with a friend's 9-week old Bernese Mountain Dog puppy. Nothing adds to the good-race karma like a visit with an adorable puppy. I eventually pulled myself away from the cuteness and headed in for the pre-race meeting. Pretty standard stuff, but there was noticeable "chatter" from the post-Delaware contingent at the announcement that there would be no swim cutoff. Lots of discussion about drafting and blocking on the bike, since we'd be cramming almost 600 riders into a 6-mile loop.
Once the meeting was over, eight or so of us headed to a local restaurant for a solid pasta lunch. Yay, carbs! We talked about the course, commiserated again about the dastardly Delaware River, then all headed home for final preps.
Got to bed around 10pm that night, which was a little later than I wanted, but it didn't matter, because I was too keyed up about the race to sleep well. I must have slept SOME, because I did dream that I almost started the swim without putting on my wetsuit, but it sure didn't feel like it.
Race Morning
Woke up at 4am, got dressed, had breakfast (cinnamon-raisin English muffin with peanut butter, banana), loaded the car and got on the road by 4:30. Arrived at the parking area right on time at 5:15 and found several teammates getting ready to head down to the race start. Left Pat to catch some extra z's, strapped on my backpack, and biked the approximate mile to the transition area. Everything looked familiar, since we scoped things out on our bike ride the weekend before. (That was so helpful, by the way - I had almost NO course-related anxiety.) Racked up right next to Team Captain Nancy... very reassuring to be near her. Set up my transition space, hit the Honey Buckets (smelling, even by 5:45, not at ALL honey-ish), and went to peer at the lake. Which may as well have had a halo over it and been accompanied by a chorus of angels. Seriously. It looked like heaven, if heaven were a smallish man-made lake.
Even more heavenly: fears that the water temps would top 78 were unrealized. The lovely 76 degree temp meant wetsuits were totally ok. (Had the temp been 79 to 83, wetsuits would have been allowed but you would be ineligible for awards. That meant NOTHING to me, yet the anxiety persisted.) Right around that time, post-nap Pat showed up and started snapping pictures.
About twenty minutes before the ceremonies started, we all headed back to the transition area for final preps. I wiggled and Body-Glided myself into my wetsuit and snagged my swim cap and goggles. I realized that I had forgotten my flip-flops up at the car, and worried fleetingly about bare feet and pavement, but let it go fairly quickly. Nothing I could do about that.
At this point, I started tuning out the people around me, and started focusing in on the swim. I was pretty sure that at Delaware, I had underestimated the swim from the start, and even with the chorus of angels around the lake, I wanted to be sure that I didn't make the same mistake twice. I reviewed my goals for the swim: steady stroke, good reach and glide, little kicking until the last few hundred yards. I thought about my 35-min estimated swim time, and all the times I had done mile-long swims in the pool.
Before I knew it, the ceremonies were over and wave 1 was heading into the water. They did an open-water start, 4 minutes between waves. I was nervous and excited, but ready. This was it.
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