The Ironman Adventure: Day 2

Today started with some breakfast downstairs in the hotel followed by a quick 15 minute drive to CDA. First impression? What a lake! And a storm was brewing as well... Found a parking spot and walked down to City Park for a morning swim. Gatorade apparently hosts morning swims each morning where they check your bag for you while you swim and then give you some gatorade when done. Not bad.

Can you see the last bouy? No? Niether could I. Two laps of that.

The morning swim was...interesting. The water was pretty warm at 62 degrees, but thanks to Josh for the full sleeve wetsuit, the water temp was not an issue. In fact, cooler would have been ok too. What was challenging were the choppy waves and white caps coming straight for you on the outbound leg of the lap. Talk about learning to swim again with those big arms! The water was so clear though and the inbound straight was semi-surfing.

Thanks for the sleeves, Josh!

After the swim, we changed and realized the line to check in was about 60 minutes too long. So we all decided to go for a road ride, Jen on her mtb bike. We rode the bike course and I double-backed a few times to get some extra spin miles in. The run course seemed awesome, but long! Two laps of that will be super tough. After the ride, I walked into town to pick up some lunch and then headed to check-in where the line was nothing. Good timing.

Jeana, Jake, me, and Jen. Athletes and cheering section unite!

After signing my life away countless of times and finally getting my timing chip, I was now officially entered into the event. Now comes the hard part of organizing my gear tomorrow morning for the mandatory gear check-in which happens the day before the race since race morning will be ridiculously hectic. After check-in, we came back to the hotel, I had a quick 15 min nap and checked some e-mail and then we headed for dinner. We were going to head into CDA for dinner but the freeway was locked up due to some accident no doubt. We ate at the local grill and bar which offered a pretty mean BBQ chicken pizza.

After dinner we drove into CDA for the mandatory athlete meeting. They basically reiterated what was in the athlete guide, but they also had staff available for questions. After getting a few questions I had answered about gear bags, we ate a quick ice cream dessert at the local parlor. I forgot it's name, but I remember it's slogan: "High fat, high taste, and high prices." Perfect. Ate some killer "Rastachio" ice cream. After ice cream, we drove back to Liberty Lake for a quick grocery store hit and then back to the hotel.

The mandatory athlete meeting was like a standing room only sold out show. I would imagine most of the 2,300+ athletes were there.

Now I'm chillin' in my hotel room getting anxious for a big day tomorrow. It's big because all game plans must be set. Gear bags are in and the bike is left at the venue. Game on!

Parting shot for the night... I haven't seen stormy skies like this for a while. Amazing, huh?