Pre-Race Day and Race Prep.

Today I actually spent a very small amount of time preparing for my race tomorrow and a very large amount of time doing other things. I found this snippet on Brooks's website the other day and thought that it pertains so much to why I run and especially why I love to race (Brooks is sponsoring my Lake Health Half tomorrow so this is extra relevant!).

I'm still very involved with my high school rowing team, and today we hosted 8 seventh-turning-eigth grade girls to try to rope them into this crazy, wonderful sport as early as possible. It was GREAT to be back at the old boathouse once again, which I (unbelievably) haven't visited in 3-4 weeks! I loved teaching the girls about the sport I'm so in love with, and it was great to see their faces light up when the whole process of taking strokes finally connected with them. I'm finding more and more that working with kids is truly an amazing experience--very rewarding!

Red and white school colors on our boats!

Looks like a shoe is livin' loose off it's foot-stretcher!

Coxswain status!

As I let my Garmin charge up and get ready to go, I've thought of a few other things that I want to keep in mind for tomorrow, having gotten one half-marathon under my belt already. The night before CLE, I posted a list of things I needed to get together for my post-race bag. Today, I want to note that I'm adding two things to that list:

• Kleenex
• Handwipes

Somehow I still got sticky, despite avoiding the drinkable Gatorade! The Kleenex is for when the portable bathrooms will inevitably run out of toilet paper--something I should have foreseen from all my experience with them at regattas but yet managed to overlook! Other than those two items, my race packing list is very much the same. Tomorrow I'll wear my purple technical shirt and orange tempo shorts and probably my white tech hat. Not sure if I'll even stick the sunglasses on my head this time as it's supposed to be VERY rainy and even thundery for the entire time I'm out there. The light material of my shirt should really help with that, and I just hope the socks that I've laid out for tomorrow with put up with all of the dampness! 

In general, there's A LOT less hype for this race than I experienced for CLE, and I'm so not-in-race-mode that I'm afraid I might forget something important or overlook something big. Maybe the fact that I'm not super-focused on it will help it go better, though. I'll have to let you know tomorrow!