Twas the night before "Christmas", er, I mean, "Ironman Louisville"...

Today was a busy and intense day. I only had about 5 hours of sleep because Alice and the kids were laughing all night and I couldn't get into a deep sleep. My plan for the day was to go to the athletes pre race briefing and then do a pre race swim, bike and run for 15 minutes each.

I got up to late to do the swim, but I did do the run with John and then went for a bike ride by myself. The family ended up going to six flags. I was originally going to go, but decided I needed the time to prepare and hopefully take a late afternoon nap. It was a good thing I didn't go because it took me until 4:00 pm to get everything done, and I was lucky enough to have an hour nap.

It took me about 90 minutes to get all my racing stuff organized, putting on all my race numbers on the bike and helmet, inspect and tighten every bolt on the bike and just visualize my transitions to ensure I had everything packed. John and I walked over to the transition together and checked in our bikes and gear bags. After I put my bike on the rack and dropped off my gear bags, I started to feel nervous. This is really happening. 294 days ago I decided to do this race and now I'm one sleep away from the race start.

Since November 12th I've swam 172.13 miles (277.6 km), I've biked 4283.34 miles (6908 km), I've run 979.76 miles (1580 km) and I've done 49 weight training sessions. I can't be any more ready. All I can hope for is that I feel good tomorrow. The weather man is predicting mid 90's, so it is going to be a hot one. It will all be about heat management and not over extending the effort.

All I've done for the past week is eat. Tonight was the "last supper". My parents, Alice, Alyssa, Reid, John and I went for a nice dinner. We finished around 8:30, then Alice, the kids and I went to the grocery store to pick up water, bagels and banana's for tomorrow morning. I did my final body shave for the race and got a wake up call for 5:15 am. The race can't come soon enough, all I want to do is finish and finish strong. There is nothing more I can do to get ready, it's now just a waiting game.

It all comes down to tomorrow!