The Big Race: T-Minus 1 Day

The day before the race I started to get really nervous.  I'd trained really hard, but I kept hearing so many horror stories about the bike leg that I started to worry that I'd get out into the mountains and I wouldn't be able to do it.  I think part of my mood was the weather taking it's toll; it had been in the high nineties every day that we had been there, and I had spent every afternoon out hiking in the desert with my dad.  I felt like I had been baked.

On the bright side I had the best hamburger of my life that day:

This was the Drunken Onion Burger at the Slickrock Cafe.  They slow cook red onions in beer which was fantastic.

My dad and I also saw some pretty amazing scenery at Canyonlands National Park.  The views were amazing, there were canyons inside of canyons; I've never seen anything so big in all my life:

Then at dinner my parents and I went to this great Italian restaurant so I could carb up:

That night I had so much on my mind that I couldn't ever completely relax.  A few days before they had changed the start of the race from 9:30 AM to 7:30 AM which drove me nuts.  They did it because of the heat, but that meant I was going to have to get up at 4 AM to have breakfast!  I spent the whole night tossing and turning and trying not to think about hydration and wetsuits and transitions and flat tires and energy gels and on and on that finally my alarm went off and it was time to go.