Pre-race - USAT Age Group Nationals

Hello from Milwaukee! I am resting in the hotel room getting ready for USAT olympic nationals tomorrow.

The journey started Wednesday night with the bike packing (practice for China!)...

... and continued Thursday evening with 2 flights after work and eventually a reunion with my bike at the Milwaukee airport... thank goodness!

There were bikes everywhere in the airport! After flight delays and waiting for our shuttle (GoRiteway is a great option - they fit 2 bike boxes + luggage in their van) we made it to the Hampton Inn very late last night (aka early this morning).

We slept in a bit before breakfast and bike reassembly. The reassembly went mostly OK (and took less time than the packing!) except I needed a new skewer. So we headed off for packet pick-up, bike mechanics, swim familiarization, rules briefing, and bike check-in. Whew.

The bike maintenance by Wheel and Sprocket was great. $13 for a new skewer and we were off. 

The swim familiarization was great! The lake wasn't too, too cold, and the water was clear. And Milwaukee is actually pretty! 

After the swim, I took a quick spin to be sure my bike was good. There's a great path that's part of the run course that was a perfect loop to shift through gears and check breaks, while checking out more of the lakefront.

Then I racked my bike in transition until tomorrow.

They have state flags all around transition, so I found both NC and SC. :)

(And for the record, I normally don't wear race t-shirts before finishing the race, but I was getting WAY too much sun in that tank top.)

We walked by the finish line on the way back to the hotel - hope to be here again tomorrow!

After a restful afternoon, we went to the pasta party at Il Mito. I wanted to love it, and the food was really good and a good price for 3 courses, but I was disappointed by the long wait for a table even when we had reserved (and pre-paid!) for a time and the long wait for water once we finally got seated. But we had some really fun table mates and like I said, the food was good when it finally came, so all-in-all it was probably worth the price.

So, here we are, my bag is packed, my race number tatoos are on, and my Team USA uniform is laid out. Time to sleep!