Group Practice #16
6 miles on the schedule
Start time: 5:30 AM for walkers 1, 6:00 AM for walkers 2, 6:30 AM for runners

This morning we had three wave starts to training.  Mainly because a couple of the walkers decided they wanted to start at 5:30 to beat the heat.  It was a smart plan, I would probably encourage everyone on our team do that all the time if I didn’t think we’d get a ton of complaints.  We still have people who struggle to make it by 6:30 some days!

This was our final group training before the big race.  6 days from today we will be boarding a plane and heading to wine country.  8 days from today is the big race day!  The event we’ve been building up to for 16 weeks is finally upon us.  I’m super excited, as well as super devastated that I can’t cover the course with the team.  I feel like I’m letting them down in some ways.  All season I’ve promised them, I’ll be with you out there, I will make certain you cross that finish line.  And now, I get to be stationed at a certain point on the course to cheer them on.  Not quite the same!

I’m kind of wondering if I should even wear my Team Challenge jersey on the course if I’m just spectating.  It feels a little like an imposter!  I guess I’ll wait and see when we get the jerseys… that was supposed to happen today.  But trouble at the printer made it so our team’s jerseys aren’t going to be ready until Monday.

Still, we spent some time after the miles were done going over event weekend details.  My co-coach Jimmy and I gave them a mini-clinic on pre-race final details:
– Stick to the schedule
– Don’t try anything new
– Don’t do any new workouts because you can’t increase your fitness at this point but you could hurt yourself
– Make sure you pack your race gear in your carry-on, you never know what could happen!
– Put your race number on the FRONT of you.
– Timing chips go on the shoe.
– Keep up your fueling that you’ve practice all season.
– Make sure you eat post-race
– HAVE FUN!!!

The Team has smashed their fundraising goal for the season, topping our $100,000 goal with more money still coming in!

We have one gal on our team who had a bad Crohn’s flare up recently and was hospitalized.  She is supposed to be released today and finding out if the doctor will clear her to go to Napa.  One of our mentors had to deal with an accident where her son gashed open his face badly last night.  Another one of our mentors/runners has been having heart issues and can’t run the race now.  Why does it seem like there are always so many last-minute things?  Last season we had team members with a death in the family last second.  It’s so hard emotionally to deal with that kind of stuff anyway, but you throw in the imminent race and it compounds the difficulties.

But despite the late-game hardships, Team Vegas is ready to tackle 13.1 miles through wine country!  Napa to Sonoma, Team Vegas gonna own ya!