Make a list and check it 50 million times…Saturday morning

When we woke up Saturday morning, we found that weather forecast seemed to be accurate—it was supposed to be cool and rainy Saturday and then cool with a chance of showers later on Sunday. We attempted to confirm this by checking the Weather Channel (but with satellite, “local on the 8’s” didn’t help us at all), checking online via my cell phone and mobile web, and calling both Sparkle and Theresa for last-minute updates from both weather.com and accuweather.com prior to their departure. As the day progressed, it seemed as though the two websites became closer to each other, and it seemed like we had a bona fide forecast for Sunday—60-ish with a 30% chance of showers, with most of the rain (if any) occurring at night.

With the forecast under control (or so we thought), we had decided to do one last quick bike and run before we checked our bikes and gear. Vardo also had a last-minute request to venture to Machinery Row to see if they had any full-fingered gloves she could wear Sunday, so we headed out. With the temperature seeming to be pretty close to what it was supposed to be Sunday, I used the quick training outing as a chance to try some different clothing options. I went out in tri shorts, a short-sleeve shirt and jacket, and after the brief 6-mile ride, I had decided to pack my bike shorts, leg warmers, toe covers, an Under Armour shirt, my short-sleeve jersey, arm warmers, full-fingered gloves, and my wind jacket. I figured I could shove the warmers and jacket in my jersey pockets if I needed, but that I’d rather be warmer than cooler, especially since I had spent the better part of the hot, humid summer training for my hydration and nutrition and sweat didn’t scare me nearly as much as cold weather did. Admittedly, I was patting myself on the back for having the foresight to stop at REI on the way home from work the week before to pick up leg warmers and full-fingered gloves—especially after we viewed the very picked-over inventories at both Machinery Row and the expo (Vardo, incidentally, bought the very last pair of full-fingered gloves at Machinery Row—thankfully they were in her size).

With my bike wardrobe finally decided (and I do mean finally—it was a struggle getting to that point, to say the least) and our final little training adventure under our belts, we headed back to the room to compile the various transition and special needs bags for the race. I pulled out my very specific checklists (which I took grief over but was very glad I had) and went to work. Tums, Pepto tablets, Tylenol 8-hour, and Body Glide went automatically into each of the four bags (two for T1 and T2, and special needs for both bike and run). My T1 (swim to bike) bag ended up being very heavy and very full as a result of the excess wardrobe items (sports bra, shorts, jersey, Under Armour shirt, leg and arm warmers, wind jacket, toe covers, gloves, socks, shoes, helmet), plus a bottle of water and Gatorade Endurance just in case I decided I needed hydration coming out of the swim. The bag damn near didn’t close, but I eventually got everything in there after pulling everything out, checking it off on the list, and putting it back in the bag.

My T2 bag was almost as bad—thankfully I didn’t have a helmet to worry about, but the wardrobe factor was still a fun one (again, sports bra, tri shirt (had to have the pocket in the back for my gel flask), long-sleeve tech shirt, tri shorts, Kraft jacket, socks, and running shoes), plus the water, Gatorade, gel flask, blister band-aids, and Ziploc with my “before” picture in it. Special needs for the bike was easy—just needed some extra CO2 cartridges, a bottle with Perpetuem powder and Hammer Gel pre-measured in it, and a bottle of water to mix the nutrition with to go along with the Tums, etc. that was already packed. Run special needs took some extra thought—I ended up throwing in another long-sleeve tech shirt, my red jacket, gloves, extra socks, and another gel flask—all of which made me hope like hell that I’d be able to recover my run special needs bag (we were pretty much told all along not to put anything in special needs that we would want back). Again, all bags were packed, unpacked and checked versus my checklist, and repacked—a painful process, but methodical enough to put my mind at ease.

Both Vardo and I kept hollering out items to each other to make sure we both had appropriate stuff packed—I’m sure an outsider looking in would have found the whole thing quite comical, but we just wanted to make sure we had all of our options covered, especially considering the great unknown of the forecasted cooler, rainy weather. Bottom line, though, we were both packed (at least our transition bags) and ready to go by 10 am—otherwise known as the magic time where we could check our bikes and gear bags and be done with them until race morning.

With our checklists checked off and transition bags packed, we took our bikes and T1 and T2 bags and headed down to the transition area. We actually ended up being a little early and had to wait in line to drop off our bikes, but soon found ourselves at the appropriate bike racks. Given that we were racing in the same age group, our racks were right next to each other, which came in handy as we passed the duct tape and trash bags back and forth to cover our seats, aerobars, and every other part of the bike that we could easily cover (as it turns out, there really isn’t much more to cover than one’s seat and aerobars). I had a moment of mild panic, though, as I noticed my front bottle cage (the one that carries my nutrition) had a huge crack in it—as the “oh shit” moments before such a major event go, this was probably minor and probably could’ve been repaired with a big ol’ piece of duct tape, but I quickly made plans to buy a new cage and get it swapped out before the 3 pm deadline when transition closed for the day.

With our bikes safely racked and covered, we then both headed into Monona Terrace to drop off our transition bags. Once I figured out where the bags went relative to the numbered signs, I was fine—just tied a big bow with the bag strings to keep everything intact, dropped them off, and was off to the expo to find a new bottle cage. As luck would have it, I was able to buy the last one they had in the style that I used—otherwise I probably would’ve opted for the duct tape option. But, with a new cage in hand, I ran up to the room to grab my Allen wrench set from my bike tool kit (yep—anal enough to have all of my tools on hand just in case), then headed out to swap out cages. In the ultimate display of anal paranoia, I actually took the back cage and moved it to the front (just in case there was any “break-in” factor that might make a bottle more difficult to grab), then used the new cage as my back cage for my water bottle—much less risk there if I couldn’t grab the bottle easily. But, I was happy with my setup, my bike was in a decent starting gear, and I was ready to go, at least from an equipment standpoint.