Pre-Race Report: The Travel Day

I finally began to write out memories from last week's event. I'll post them in a series of paragraphs (so as not to overwhelm!) as they are written. I've decided to take another low-key couple of days before ramping up any mileage for sport. I want to readjust back to work and the "One Ton of Fun" information that I missed in the last week. The Ironman 70.3 World Championships are in mid-November and the Dallas White Rock Marathon is in December. Therefore, I don't have to really start getting serious until July. I'm going to spend this week going easy, doing some yoga/pilates, riding my bike for the fun of it. Wow...what a concept :-)

Without further adieu. Here we go from the beginning, including the really mundane parts...

Taking Off Friday, June 9th: Barely

For those that have traveled and shipped bikes across the country, you know how cumbersome and nerve-wracking it can be. How ironic that we spend heaps of money and time getting our bike fit just right only to take the whole thing apart to travel across the USA. For those of you that heard my interview on “Get Your Geek On,” Episode #21, you heard the ramblings of a panic attack in progress about the act of shipping my bike and packing it properly.

Well, as per usual, we got to the airport with relatively little time to spare. Yes, it was my fault. I can’t even make up any lame excuses like hair or makeup drama. I just didn’t leave work as early as I had hoped. In any event, we made it to the airport and because we were shipping two large bike boxes, we had to wait in the endless line to check in and pay the extra freight. At this point, we were pretty convinced that we weren’t making this particular flight. The airlines have been rightfully strict about closing the flight a half-hour before take-off and we were treading on the borders of that time limit. We got up to the ticket agent and her first reaction was one of, “Sorry-you are S.O.L.” We immediately started to conjure up alternative plans. Can we at least get the bikes shipped? Later flights? Suddenly (and for no apparent reason), she kicked into team-player mode and started expediting our boarding process. Seriously, other passengers were already being told they were missing this flight and this wonderful woman was in stealth mode to get us on board. Somehow, by the grace of the American Airlines Angel, we made it on our flight en route with Baltimore as our final destination.

Friday night flowed smoothly from that point. Our bikes made it seemingly in one piece to Baltimore and we loaded everything up in our rented SUV and headed to our hotel near the airport.