#847

Race numbers are posted. That's me up above. Feel free to keep an eye on my progress over the course of the day. I'm in the second wave of M35-39, leaving at 7:30 am. With any luck, I'll be finishing before 12:30.

I'm having a lot of trouble keeping the motivation up right now. There are a few contributing factors. First, I don't think I had myself ready for the logistical challenges of racing on the other side of the country. I'm spending so much time thinking about what all I need to take, and how I'll get it there, and making sure it arrives, and contingency plans, and everything else that I'm burnt out with the idea. There's a ton of stuff to keep track of, and I hope that once I'm in Clearwater and settled, I'll be able to take a deep breath and get ready to race. Second, this sickness is killing me. If I weren't racing, I wouldn't put any mind into it, since it's a fairly minor cold at this point. But I am racing, and I'm racing a kind of big race, so that makes the cold a big deal. I'm constantly wavering on whether to do a workout or not, whether to add any intensity, how much this all will cost me Saturday morning, if I'll be able to use heart rate to manage the bike leg, and Lord knows how many other things I've built up in my own head. I knew going in that I wasn't going to be winning anything, but with even my modest goals being pushed further out of reach, it's getting a little depressing. Again, if this can clear in the next day or two, I think I'll be able to get my mind right.

One nice little serendipitous boon is my actual race number. It's a good combination, since #84 was my number at Muskoka, and 7 is a regularly recurring positive number in my life. In the words of Carl Spackler, "So I have that going for me, which is nice."