Friday, January 6
And I thought getting out of bed yesterday was hard…this whole not going to bed until 2am thing is killing me. Despite the lack of sleep, today was a great day! Once I eventually woke up and got my morning dose of Nutella, a few of us went out shopping along the Royal Mile. It was nice and relaxing just being able to walk around and not have to worry about being anywhere.
We finished shopping and walking around just in time for lunch. All of our meals have been served at the hotel. It has been so nice to not have to worry about finding food, and the things they serve are really good. They lack a little in the flavor department…but that’s nothing a little salt doesn’t take care of. While eating lunch, we quickly realized that the 2008 Olympic champions in the 1500, steeplechase, and 5k were sitting at the table right next to us and Kenenisa Bekele (Olympic Champion and World Record Holder) was sitting at the table right behind us.
After lunch we had a little time to kill before heading over to the course for our pre-race course preview. I went up to my room and ended up getting in a nice little nap. It wasn’t a long one, but it was that perfect amount of time where you wake up feeling a lot better. Lately, I have been waking up from naps feeling like I have been hit by a semi-truck, so this was a nice little change.
We jogged over to the course from the hotel and for the first time since I had left the US, the excitement of the race started to outweigh the nerves of the race. It was the first time that we all got to run together as a team and we quickly learned that the race was going to be nothing short of a mudfest. We were slipping and sliding all over the place in our trainers and knew that we needed to find the biggest spikes we possibly could to put in our shoes. It was also our first look at the log jump that we had been hearing about since we got there. I was very excited about this log jump. You will never hear me complaining about having to jump over things in a cross country race. After our run and some trial runs over the log jump, I was feeling good and ready to go. I couldn’t wait to race. The nerves were completely gone and I just wanted to put the jersey on race.
We went back to the hotel after our run for a little more down time before having a team meeting to go over all the details of the race. We had another meeting after that with all the teams and competitors in the race and were given our bib numbers. We also got to watch the footage of last years race while enjoying a delicious dinner. I followed up my dinner with my usual pre-race 1/2 of a Snickers bar. (Have to top off those glycogen stores!) I don’t really know why I only eat 1/2…it’s just tradition…and we can’t mess with that.
Hard to believe that race day is pretty much here! With the nerves getting to me early on in the trip I came up with a little mantra, if you will, that I have been saying over and over again to myself. The original idea was taken from the movie, The Help…but I changed some of the wording. I also wrote it down and have had it next to my bed since we got here. So, for today, I will leave you with that.
thoughts leading up to the race...
