1 week until we leave for our Georgia race and we're checking all the details off our list:
- Confirming our hydration bladders don't leak (and buying new ones when they do!)
- Testing the burn time on all our HID lights (and the ones we're borrowing from friends)
- Keeping an eye on the weather forecast for Blairsville, GA
- It's calling for partly cloudy and a high of 48 and low of 27
on Saturday; not great, but not too bad and at least it's not calling
for rain!
- Picking up food and other supplies
- Sorting out driving logistics and begging support crew to miss work for us
This is all pretty typical stuff, really. The challenging part for me is that we should have done this a month ago but
Odyssey
moved the race date at the last minute (from Jan 15 to Feb 11) so all
this planning and organizing is carrying on into February when I should
really be spending more time on
HRAdventure race planning; this is a critical time for testing, meeting with park and city leaders, etc.
I'm making it all work and things could be much worse . . . besides, we
just got word from Odyssey that there will only be about 15-18 miles of
paddling at this race which translates into
easily 1.5 to 2 hours
less time on the water compared to
the race we did last January
and that paddling leg is what really killed us. We came off the
water miserable, stiff, and cold; portaging was an attractive option
just to get the circulation going in your legs! This year will be
different because of
a better canoe and we're generally one year wiser/fitter going into it.