Less than 48 hours to go...

Yep, in 48 hours we'll already be 50 minutes into the '09 MVP Bitter Pill. Hard to believe it's here already. I've been pretty busy this week getting my stuff together and getting ready. I did one last training run on Monday afternoon, which went pretty badly. I am blaming it on the heat and lack of food and water, and trying not to let it worry me. Enough about that.

A race update was posted on the website yesterday which informed us that we do not need to worry about carrying helmets and bike shoes with us for the entire race (good news for J and Justin, but I wear my regular shoes for the entire race, so no big help for me there), but we will have to carry our PFDs. It also has got me thinking about what that means for the course. Before a race, as the navigator, I spend quite a bit of time browsing maps of the race area trying to get into the head of the course designers. It worked out pretty well last time, but we had home field advantage then. Looking at maps of the Craftsbury area, there are several options for the canoe leg as well as the trekking and bike legs. I have some thoughts/ideas on possible course layouts, but I won't share them just yet :)

The move of the start time from the usual 5am to 6am is also interesting. I am guessing this is to make it easier for teams who have to drive from, say, Burlington to get to the race start on time. It will also make it easier for us, since the 5am start generally meant that the first 30-60 minutes of the race were in the dark, requiring headlamps and making the initial navigation/map reading that much more challenging. Starting at 6am means plenty of light for the entire race (and also an extra hour or so of afternoon/evening heat).

Well, enough speculating for now. Back to work, and race preparations. Some last minute packing tonight, and the tommorrow afternoon we're off to Craftsbury!!

Grambo