Saturday, November 28, 2009

Race Ready!

Holla!

So we have had an interesting trip so far. On Wednesday we were up at 3:30 am and off to the airport by 4:30am. Got there, got checked in, through security, waiting by our gait and my name gets called to return to security.

INSTANT PANIC! So I go back and had to watch on a little screen while they looked through my bag. \i have all of my race stuff in there so I was worried. Alas they found my CO2 cartriges that I thought I had hidden so well. If Greg tells you you can get them through...he lies. SO got that taken care of, go meet up with the group and 5 min later my name gets called again. BLAH! This time I had to go to the agents desk. Turns out the security people don't talk to the agent desk...and they called me about the same thing. Again get back with the group and my name gets called a third time. By now I have had about 3 hours of sleep and I was getting really cranky. They needed my address for some reason, so after that I made it onto the plane and safely to Dallas.

The rest of the trip went pretty good until we got to Mexico and then it was a shit show again....well a little bit anyway. The cab drivers are crazies! We made it to playa del carmen through mant many back roads; if we had to drive ourselves there I don't think we would have made it. So we get to this road and the guy tells us that we are at the ferry terminal and to get out. There was no water anywhere...just stone buidlings and a crap load of people. \you can hire these guys on bikes to carry your luggage to the ferry...they started loading our stuff up and took off towards this mysterious "ferry." We finally found water and a boat and two of us had to go with the luggage and the others went to stand in line. Keep in mind that to learn this there were hundreds of people around who only spoke spanish and just pointed to us to tell us where to go. I was a little afraid of loosing my bike!

Once on the ferry I learned that this is the roughest ferry ever and for the first time in my life got seasick. It was terrible. Thank goodness for Susie's mom Kate for having gravol. I am sure that kept me from heaving all over people! We got to Cozumel...got to the condo and then went for groceries. Again....store closing and trying to read spanish labels to buy food! Blah. We had also been up for almost 20 hours by this point.

Other than the first day it has been pretty easy going. Everybody is super friendly. I even bartered for a necklace! Yeah me.

tomorrow is race day and I am not nervous yet. This will change once I get to the race site.
Now for all of you Ironman newbies following the race it is:

Swin 3.8 km
Bike 180 km
Run 42 km

we have 17 hours to complete it. My number is 59 and you can search at www.ironmanlive.com and I will hopefully update my blog in the next couple of days!


Until then...

Adios

4 comments:

Sarah said...

Best of luck to you!

Sparfy said...

hi, i am training for my first ever tri in canada. hoping for about a 16:50ish finish! :-) just clicking around from other peoples blog links and found yours.

Dano said...

Good job Leslie! Just saw your finish time. Damn tracker was messed up today! Enjoy the sun now. Hope Chad's spectating wasn't too tough on him, lol.

sue said...

Congratulations Kiddo - you are awesome! What a race - it was great to be able to track you online Wish we could have been there this time too! Hugs and Kisses - Have a GREAT holiday - You deserve it Love Sue