Philadelphia

Well, Beth's got her triathlon in Philly in the morning. She's turned in already and I'm getting ready to soon. It's just tough to go to bed at 9pm. The wake up call is set for 4am. That's about the only bad thing about these triathlons--the early race day wake up.

Today, we had a pretty typical day: Eat breakfast, Beth do her bike/run pre-day routine while I scout things out and then run with her, we eat lunch, drive the course, eat dinner, and prepare things for the next morning. The one snafu was driving around Philly was TOUGH. There are a lot of one way roads, some roads were closed due to the sprint tri going on today and I don't even want to get started about that figure 8 loop by the art museum (the place Rocky ran to the top of). I think I was in the wrong lane every time there (not that some cars kept to one lane--they just weaved back and forth). Anyway, this is probably a good step up to prepare us for New York next month. I'm fearing the logistics of that one.

My preparation for race day entails figuring out where I will be on the different parts of the race. This one is posing a little bit of trouble in that the swim is down the Schuylkill River one way. There are buses shuttling up to this start (obviously 1500 m away). The problem is the transition area is on the OPPOSITE side of the river from where they are entering the water. This means that if the buses are athletes only I will have to jog over. The trouble is that there's not too many bridges to choose from. It looks like with all the winding I'll have to go about 2 or so miles to get there. That's not too bad because there's plenty of time beforehand and I don't mind getting in a little run. The trouble's going to be getting back to let her know where Beth stands coming out of the water. I'm going to have to book it back to transition to be there in time.

So, we'll see how it goes. I think Beth's going to rock the course tomorrow because the bike is rolling hills and the run is flat, so she should go pretty fast.

In other news, the Pirates won tonight....not that it matters after losing 5 of 6 on the road before coming home.

Stay tuned for Beth's blog tomorrow evening for results when we get back to the western side of the state!