This morning, we Sloans headed out of the house early and got out the door to packet pickup, swim clinic and bike drop-off. Now, I truly appreciate a well-oiled machine and so far, the REV 3 has sort of let me down. We drove in circles to the directed address, but realized that the address on the website had the wrong zip code. We were given no parking instructions, so when we finally located the packet-pickup, we could not park there, so we had to continue our frustrated circling. Once I picked up my packet, they had forgotten safety pins to pin our numbers to our run shirts. Now, in their defense, I forgot my race belt to tack my number to and wear during the race, an everyone wears race belts, BUT still SAFETY PINS. COME ON!! I have not gone to a race in the last 20 years of my life that did not involve pinning a race number on my shirt. Luckily, I was able to get back by the pick up tent after some poor volunteer had gone to Office Depot to pick up a bunch.
Now, once packet pickup was achieved, I waited on my husband while he went to get my bike and Ivan and I hit the REV 3 triathlon kids area. Now, in the kids area they had a sky high tiger shaped JumpJump slide with which Ivan was immediately enamored. Now, of course, Ivan (at age 2) was too young to go up or down a huge inflatable tiger shaped slide. I am going to go ahead and gauge the height of the tiger JumpJump at the height of a high dive.
So, who got to hoist both herself and a squirming two year old up the ladder and down the slide. That would be ME. Yes, I have a race tomorrow, and yes I have climbed a JumpJump ladder in my bare feet 5 times while carrying a squirming weight of 26 pounds. Now, you would think that sliding down would be fun, and it was for Ivan. The slide part, however, was VERY fast; so fast that my heels felt like they were getting a rug burn. When, I went down the fifth AND FINAL time, I determined that I would avoid run burn on my heels by lifting up my feet.
When I went down the slide with my feet up, Ivan and I went even faster with nothing to slow us down. SO fast, in fact, that my running shorts were pulled into my crack, completely exposing my left cheek for the ride down, and now I have a huge red rug burn on my rear end that should feel really nice on the bike tomorrow. THANK YOU REV 3 JumpJump.
After my ridiculous JumpJump experience, we all headed down to the river for the swim clinic which they had postponed without telling anyone so as to avoid the University of Tennessee's Saturday morning crew practice. A few of us went ahead and practiced our swim, but it was a pretty solitary experience and I get a little nervous in open water without a buddy. I swam about 800 meters and got out. The water was just perfect with my wetsuit, and I then hopped out of the water to make a pit stop at Starbucks, listen to the athlete's briefing and trek back up to my car so that I could get my bike and check it in, as this race requires night before set up in transition.
After all that, it was 1:00, and we were starving and Ivan was ready to go. We headed out to Litton's Diner for lunch!!
Pick of me this morning with my bike in bike transition
Also a pick of the Pro-Transition area. I had never seen anything like it before. It is roped off and special. The athletes park their bikes under huge pictures of themselves.
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