Ready, Set, Syracuse...

I got the WORST sleep last night. I got to bed at 11:00, fell asleep at 1:00 am and was woken up at 2:37 am by the phone ringing. It was a wrong number.

Getting a phone call in the wee hours of the morning is always frightening. It's usually NEVER good news. I was sleeping lightly to begin with and after the phone rang it took me 2 more hours to get back to a full sleep.

It's a missed sleep you can't get back. Not an ideal situation when doing a half Ironman on Sunday.

I got up at 7:15 am, got ready, had breakfast and by the time John Barclay came over and we got on the road it was 9:30 am. Our first stop was McDonald's and John had a "mint areo" McFlurry, the breakfast of Champions.

The drive to Syracuse was easy, pretty and uneventful. Crossing the border was only about a 15-20 minute wait.

It was a typical "boys road trip" on the way down. Lots of "ribbing" and "laughs". I took the worst of it. Rich loves bugging me about having a blog and thinks it's "narcissistic". He had fun bugging me about the "cardboard cut out standee of my myself" as well. I just laughed, I like a good joke, even if it's at my expense.

When we got to the hotel, I had a bit of a scare when they couldn't find my reservation and when I showed them the confirmation, they told me my reservation was for a "different Holiday Inn in Syracuse". Luckily they still had some rooms left.

For this race, we're packing the 4 of us in one room. John and I got the beds and Rich and Davis got the air mattress and cot. The upside is the room cost is split four ways.

The race expo was standard fair. For this race all our race gear is to be laid out by our bikes, there's no typical run and bike gear bags. I'm told there is going to be about 2000 athletes competing and the weather will be around 66 F and they call for rain. We drove half of the course, specifically the first 18 km which is primarily hill climbing and the toughest part. The rest of the course is flat, rolling or downhill.

All day I've been tired and just wanted to get back to the hotel to sleep. I was hoping we'd eat early and get back by 4 pm. Unfortunately, by the time we racked our bikes, drove the course and ate, we didn't get back until 7 pm. We had a great dinner at an Italian Pasta restaurant and afterwards Rich went to a Syracuse football game and Davis, John and I headed back to the hotel.

For tomorrow's race you can track us on www.ironman.com. My race number is 1889, Davis is 968 and John is 2061. I'm not looking forward to the race. My only goal is to get it over with respectfully. I know it's going to hurt, especially if my competitive nature takes over and I don't feel strong.

No Training

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