Expo day!

To avoid one crazy long post, I'm going to break up my Tri experience.
1. Expo day
2. RACE DAY!

Saturday August 25th: Expo/Packet Pickup day

The whole week leading up to the tri I had been getting terrible sleep. My gut was all fluttery and unpleasant and honestly, even though it was the first week of classes, I don't remember much of it. I do remember finishing the first to units for my online class so that was a plus.

Got up Saturday morning, freaking out. I rechecked my bags about a billion times to make sure I had everything. We loaded up the car and drove to Pleasant Prairie. We arrived at the Recplex and it was pretty packed. I learned that 2,300 women were competing so it makes sense that there was a lot of activity. The Recplex basketball area was sectioned off and there were stations set up all over.

The first thing I did was check the wall for my race number > #4452, my wave number > #2 starting at 7:03am, and my swim cap color > purple.

I wandered over to pick up my timing chip and then settled in to listen to the Race Day pep talk and the Course Overview. It was fun listening to the amazing stories of all the women who overcame severe accidents, cancer, and all sorts of other things just to make it to the tri. I felt a little intimidated by the number of women competing but almost everyone I talked to was sweet and supportive. After the talk, Sally Edwards was signing posters and offering one on one encouragement. This is gonna sound super nerdy, but when I got up to the table she hugged me (remember I met/trained with her for tri camp) and signed a poster with a runner on it for me and I was really excited that she remembered me. It says, "Carrie- You are an AWESOME runner!" It's funny because I am not, but its really inspiring and I'm going to hang it up in my room. I'll be a runner one day.

On the way out of the Recplex, we had our timing chips checked (gotta make sure its registered to you) and got body marked. Basically, these nice ladies with giant sharpies write your race number on your arm. Not gonna lie, I felt pretty badass.

Last stop on the expo train = rack your bike.

I brought my bike into transition, got my tire pressure checked and found a spot to hang my bike and tried not to imagine all the horrible things that could potentially happen. Like imagine a burglar all ninja  and sneaky like, clad in all black complete with the black mask that only shows your eyes coming in the night to steal my bike.

My family came up to support me (along with Don and Danny) and we all had Famous Daves for dinner. I know I said I was going to carbo load, but the Olive Garden was insane - I guess everyone else had the same idea - so we decided that we wanted to eat sometime that night and went to Famous Daves instead.

I settled into bed at 9pm, setting my alarm for 4:40am and, guess what? I had a really hard time falling asleep. I woke up like 5 times and sometime after four just laid in bed waiting for the alarm to go off.