I’m sitting in Redmond Airport preparing to board my flight to Salt Lake, then a connection to Fayetteville, Arkansas today. Inside of 48 hours until race time.
Stayed up late last night packing (2am). Now that Benjamin is 5, he’s becoming quite a little helper. He was a huge help last night helping me with drop bag prep. He filled almost half of my 12 gel flasks by squeezing individual packets into the flasks, then topping off with water…I think he squeezed 30+ packets into flasks. We had a good assembly line going. He also helped gear up my waist packs too. Annie squeezed a couple of gel flasks, but quickly lost interest by throwing a tantrum when I wouldn’t let her squeeze the caffeine-laced gel into her mouth—2 year old and caffeine gel at 8 o’clock at night—uh, nope.
It’s cold today. Temperature as I’m leaving Bend is in the 40s, cold and rainy. In contrast, current conditions in Arkansas today is 90 and humid. Dang, talk about opposites. Good news though, the thunderstorms that were originally in the forecast for Saturday during the race have been pushed to Sunday. It’s gonna be hot and humid—upper 80s, 50-80% humidity. My hydration plan is going to have to change a bit. That’s okay, I usually do really well in the heat.