Ironman Florida...the days before

Once again - sorry this has taken me so long.  I will be doing my race report in sections - I'm not a fan of reading long posts, so I'm going to keep mine the same way :)  It will also be kind of random, so bear with me!

Let me just say that I am super glad that I checked in on Wednesday.  Five minutes in and out.  On Thursday my mother (who is an old pro at volunteering at check in) was down there at 9am.  I called her around noon when I was finished up for work:

Me:  Mom - do you guys need any help

Mom: Can't talk. Get your ass down here

Umm.  Ok.  So I make my way down to the Boardwalk and see the line - wrapped around the building.  You can read about it here in Heidi's report.  So I ended up with the awesome job (seriously, it was a ton of fun) sitting with the grandma's and grandpa's going through the sticker/number/chip bag with the rest of the racers.  It was a ton of fun and I plan on doing it next year.  I was planning to head back home before the race dinner - but I ended up working until the line was gone. 

Pre-race dinner was the same old same old:

Friday morning - we had the great idea of swimming.  It was cold and the waves where out of control.  The under toe was crazy - so crazy that I could not even get past the break and Ron had to pull me past them.  But it was one of those times where I was laugh so hard, I didn't even care.  But it was good to get in the water and knowing that jellyfish where not going to be a problem on Saturday.  I hate jellyfish.  Waves and under toe I can handle, but jellyfish is a whole other story. 

But after that 'swim' we where having doubts that we would hit the times coach set for us for the swim the next day.

After the chilly swim I met up with Heidi, Frayed Laces, and Kolla at Starbucks.  It was so much fun to meet up and talk about...well, everything.  :) 

The rest of the day was spend packing my T1 and T2 bags, picking up everyone from the airport

I'm not sure who if you have done an IM race before - but I made an excel checklist a week or so before the race and it was a huge help keeping everything organized.   KISS - Keep it simple stupid.  I'll be doing a post similar to heidi's later - what I will and won't do next time I attack the IM. 

At bike check in I ran into Eric Sullivan:

He is an awesome pro athlete who was there to cheer on his friends.  He also got suckered into talking to my coach and my mom race day for awhile.  I'm sure it was not hard to chat with them since they had a large amount of oysters and beer to share.