I love meeting someone online and totally clicking in person. It happened with my hubby. It's happened with just about all of my friends from the blogging world (I honestly can't say that I've met anyone that I didn't like. Okay. Maybe one or two. hehe) This weekend I got to meet a whole slew of wonderful people. And hang out with my team. And race as part a relay. Sounds like a trifecta perfect weekend, right?
Friday afternoon, Alisa flew in from Portland. I was so stinking excited to meet her as we've been blogging/email/team friends for a few years now. From what I knew of her, I'd love her. And I was right! She is awesome. Anyway, she flew in Friday and we spent the whole day/night gabbing. We hit up my favorite Mexican joint for dinner and then crashed hard around 9:30 at night.
Saturday we were kind of lazy in the morning, but hit the road for Anderson around 9am. I promised Alisa that we'd stop for some caffeine and I introduced her to our Quick Trip Gas Station... mmm... full coffee bar and doughnut bunches. :) She was either going to love me for introducing her to all this yumminess, or absolutely hate me for the crap that I was going to make her eat!!! The drive was quick - straight up 85 and before we knew it we were at the expo.
And it was freezing. Like 15 degrees cooler than it was when we left Atlanta. Yikes.
I was signed up to race the half, was planning on switching to the olympic, and then Alisa talked to her relay team and they realized that with some switching around of teammates, there was an opening for the bike portion of their half relay. I jumped on it (because the whole tri thing hasn't been doing it for me lately). I'd never done a relay and it would be with my teammates so that was awesome.
At the expo, I got to meet Chloe, Robin, Alex, and Tim. Kati, Carole, Laura, Charlie and the REV3 family was there too so it's super fun going to a race and knowing a ton of people. We got a quick team picture and then got checked in.
We took a quick trip over to T1 and the swim start so that Alisa could get a practice swim and I could get my bike checked in.
Then it was on to introducing Alisa to the wonderfulness that is Chick-fil-a. :) I told you, she's either going to love me or hate me. I think she loved me! :)
That afternoon and evening was pretty low key. We laid around and watched Too Cute on the animal planet (have you see this? Holy heck it's awesome). We went to Target for some homemade arm warmers, we went to dinner (where we got to see Andy and Jill too), we found out that our hotel had awesome cookies in the lobby for us. It was great, but we were super tired and ready to crash early.
Sunday morning we woke up and both of us were exhausted. Luckily we each had only one leg to race. :)
Alisa did AMAZING in the swim. She's awesome like that. My leg, the 56 mile bike was good. I took it slow, as I haven't been doing a lot of fast training. And I won't lie, it was hilly. For some reason my IT band was screaming at me throughout the ride which is weird because I haven't had much of that lately. The whole time, it was kind of odd, knowing that I was only biking. I wasn't soaking wet on my bike when I started (God bless all the people that were because it was freezing) and I knew that I didn't have to get off and run. And that was good. I wasn't feeling amazing. I got to T2 and Alex was waiting for me to get the time chip and take off. I politely informed him that I hadn't peed on my bike so the chip was clean for him, which he, and all of the spectators got quiet a kick out of. And with that, my race was done. I hit the potties, got changed, put my bike away and Alisa and I beelined it for the postrace grub. We had some time to kill before Alex would be in.
So one last thing... can you keep this little guy in your thoughts? Things have been a bit rough lately and our little guy is showing his age quickly. :(
