Guelph Sprint... 2 days out.

Yup, Guelph is this Saturday... and the weather is looking quite poor. Or pour might be a better word to use... as in, it will be pouring all day. Good times. At least the temperature will get up into the teens, not like Muskoka last September when it rained and the temp was single digits.

But - the distance is quite short, so I hope to just power through everything and get some dry clothes on for the trip home.

I don't have a detailed plan for this one, maybe other than to try to enjoy every minute of it, rain or not. I guess I am thinking/planning a little bit about a few things... like, I want to swim the shortest distance possible. That is, I want my sighting to be perfect. I always seem to defer to others when it comes to position in the water... jogging in when everyone else takes off, or staying off the buoy line so that the fastest swimmers from the wave after can easily pass. This usually results in me taking the turns very wide and swimming a longer distance than I'm supposed to. Well you know what? Screw that. Although I will not take off from the front, I am going to start right on the inside... if any fasties from the wave after want to swim over me, they had better be prepared to receive an all-out under water assault. Oh, that's right - I'm no one's whipping boy.

One other thing I've been thinking about is the transitions. I am really, really slow, especially in T1. In the past I've always taken a extra time to try to catch my breath after arriving at my bike, because my heart rate always feels like it is somewhere in the 2750 bpm range. But using the theory of "always moving forward," this time I'm going to keep moving, moving, moving. Once I'm on the bike and away, I can always coast if I need to. I'll still be rolling forward instead of standing still in T1. Also... I've never done it in a race, but I was thinking about starting with my shoes already on the bike. But, with crappy weather here this week, I wasn't able to practice any bike mounts outside at all... so I'll have to see about that one. I mean, rolling forward (even slowly) and doing up your shoes has got to be faster than standing there and doing them up, right?

Mainly I'm just trying to worry about the things that are within my control. The weather is not one of those things, so I'll deal with whatever is thrown my way.

As usual, time will tell.