Bike-26 minutes (4 miles)
Yup! We biked 4 miles in 26 minutes this morning! My favorite workout of the entire training!!!! Heeehee! I decided to blog now, but there may be another blog entry later today. I have so much to blog about and so many photos to post, this may be a two-blog day!!!
I couldn't sleep last night. I didn't fall asleep until after midnight and I was up at 4:45 this morning. I managed to stay in bed until 5:30. Then I got up and took the pups for a walk, ate breakfast, and went to HEB. Breakfast is included at the hotel and they have those yummy hotel waffles that you make yourself. I had half of one of those with a quarter of it with chocolate chips in the waffle syrup holder pockety things. Yummy!
After HEB Chris woke up and we took the pups for a walk over to Town Green Park where the bike transition area is. We also saw the exit from the swim. Then we walked back through Market Street which is kind of like The Domain in Austin. At 8 am Kristi, Wayne, and Bonnie, and I met up and biked back over to the swim exit and then to the swim start. Here are some pics.
Bonnie, Wayne, Kristi, and the HEB delivery guy.
Here is the spot where my bike will be in transition! Number 370!
This should be the swim exit. Looks like there are ladders that we have to climb up to get out of the water! That should be interesting!
This is the view of the "boardwalk" area that's near the swim exit. We bumped into Todd running out there.
After we saw the transition area and the swim exit we made our way over to the swim start. Here are some pictures from that area. That area is called North Shore Park.
I think this is where we actually get in the water. Looks like it's going to be one of those starts where they have us all in the water treading water before the start.
This is the area that we will swim out towards.
This is the sign that says when the practice swim is. Friday morning at 8am. Kristi, Wayne, and Bonnie are going to do it. I'm going to just get a report from them. Chris, Annabelle, and I will walk over there with the pups, but I'm not going to get in the water.
This is a good photo from the bridge over the swim start. We swim a long ways down this stretch.
It's really overcast today, which is actually pretty nice because it's hot! The Woodlands is a nice planned community. There's everything you could ever need here, but you'd never know it because all the stores are hidden behind trees and there are no big signs anywhere. It reminds me of the Bee Caves area a little in Austin. Very swanky.
Our hotel is awesome! Here are some photos of our room. There is a full kitchen with everything you could need. And there is a nice desk area where Chris is able to work from. We have an amazing king sized bed too. Last night Chris had three-quarters of the bed and the dogs decided to share the other quarter with me, leaving me with about an eighth of the king sized bed. What does that equal in regal bed terms? Maybe a peasant sized bed?
The pups are settling in nicely. I know it's helped them since we all slept here last night. Our smell is taking over the room now and they must feel more at home. We were able to go out to eat lunch today and they stayed in the room without destroying anything, and we haven't heard from any of our neighbors complaining that they were barking, so that's good news!
After the bike ride this morning we went to the Expo to sign in and to check out the shop with all the Ironman stuff in it. We waited about 10 minutes to sign-in. It was well organized and not too hot at that point. We got into the shop pretty early, so it wasn't too busy. I spent about 30 minutes looking around and trying things on. When I noticed the check-out line was getting longer and longer, I jumped in line and got out of there! I don't do well with long lines and crowds!
While Kristi and Wayne kept looking around the shop, I walked around the expo and signed up for all the raffles! Here's a shirt that I liked, but I didn't get it. I thought it fit a little funny. Not ha-ha funny, but ill-fit funny. It's kind of hard to see in the picture, but there are three people made of brass swimming, morphing into biking, morphing into running. There's a cool quote under it, but I can't remember what it said now.
Bonnie and Todd had Murphy at the Expo. Murphy was a hit, as always! Bonnie and Murphy even got interviewed to be on the Texas Ironman Highlights Show!
They had some fun things at the expo. Here's a place that was trying to sell trainers. They had a trainer hooked up to a blender. You could get on the bike, pedal, and mix a smoothie with your own pedal power! The lady has her hand on top of the blender.
And another place was selling "Compression Chairs". You sit in a air filled chair and put these plastic material leggings one. Once you're all hooked up, they turn on the machine and the chair and the leggings fill with air, which then compresses your body! Hahahaha! They'll try to sell you anything!
Here's a picture of the stuff I got at the expo. I got a visor, two water bottles, (one for home, one for work), an m-dot sticker, the purple biking outfit (there's an m-dot on both the top and bottom), and an m-dot necklace that you can barely see in this picture.
AND....Kristi gave us all an Ironman Motivation Kit last night at dinner! It was so awesome! Here's a picture of the stuff she gave us. A re-usable grocery bag, a bumper sticker, cozy socks, a magnet, and a running shirt!
Each person got a different magnet. Bonnie's said, "I am tri", Todd's said, "Got PR?" and mine has a swimmer, a biker, a runner, and a porto-potty! Hahahahahaha! Kristi also got us all temporary tattoos, which didn't arrive yet, so we'll be sporting those next week if all goes well! And everyone got the same shirt, so now we can look like a team! Sometimes when we're doing boot camp workouts people will ask us what group we're with. Well, now The Jiggly Middles have an official shirt to represent! Yeehaww!
After the expo, I came back to the hotel and met up with Chris, who had been working all morning. We met up with everyone over at Panera for lunch. Yummy! Then after lunch I went through the bag that we got when we signed in today. I was so excited when I saw the free lip balm, courtesy of the Waste Management program. Yup, lip balm from waste management. I put it on my lips and could taste dirt, banana peels, and tires. No, not really, but it sure was strange to have lip balm from the waste management company! Here's a photo.
It's actually mint flavored and 30 spf! Not too shabby for the garbage company!
While I spent the afternoon lounging on the bed with the pups working on the blog, K, W, B, and T were out on the town. Wayne got a haircut. This is the front view.
And here's the back view.
Wayne has always talked about getting an m-dot tattoo! I wonder how he found a tattoo shop in The Woodlands! He's so resourceful like that.
And apparently Kristi wanted to petition the USAT to see if she could ride this donkey instead of her bike on Saturday.
Wayne was almost knocked over as two of the professional triathletes zoomed by him on their bikes this afternoon. Good thing for his quick reflexes!
Boy, what an exciting afternoon! They also found a huge poster with all the names of the people who entered the race on it! Luckily they were in alphabetical, so they weren't too hard to find.
Once they got back to their rooms, I asked them to send me their swag pics. Here's Bonnie's stuff from her shopping spree. The big m-dot shirt on the bottom right is made up of all the participants names, and her name is listed very first at the top of the dot! Very cool!
And here's Kristi and Wayne's swag. Look how organized Monica made everything for the photo. It looks like she measured the space in between each item!
I just saw on the Texas Ironman website that the Expo and shop won't be open tomorrow. They reported that the vendors have run out of gear. I can't imagine why....
So here we are, less than 48 hours from the official start. I'm enjoying a nice chill afternoon with buggy, she won't leave my side, sweet thing. I'm going to take them for a walk in a little bit here.
Annabelle arrives tonight! Yeehawww! I'm so excited that she's coming down to cheer us on! Ok, I'm gonna make her bed now and then walk the pups.
We'll see how tired I am later and if anything else blog-worthy happens tonight. Otherwise, hasta manana!
M :)
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