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Hello from Haines City!


After a busy morning packing up the car, squeezing in a short outdoor ride and getting our furry crew ready for "grandma", it was time to hit the road down south. We headed out around noon (but didn't make it far until Karel realized he forgot our Di2 charger) and then we officially hit the road.

I had prepped a lot of meals before we left to make it easy for us to eat when we arrived to our rental home in Florida, as well as lots of snacks to minimize the need for grocery shopping. We stopped a few times to stretch our legs, go to the bathroom and pick-up dinner at Moe's but other than that, it was a smooth day of traveling without any major traffic delays. We arrived around 7:30pm and made it to bed just before 10pm. To help break up the drive, we stopped at our friend's house (Joe and Erica) in Jacksonville, FL for a good night of sleep before the rest of our trip on Thursday morning. 


To shake out the stiffness from our long day in the car on Wednesday, we went to the Winston YMCA for a nice 2000 yard swim with a 1000 main set. This main set is one of our favorites (courtesy of our friend/swim coach Kristen J):

MS: 5 x 200's broken as
#1: 200
#2: 2 x 100s
#3: 100, 2 x 50's
#4: 4 x 50's
#5: 8 x 25's
There are many different variations to this as for the rest and intensity but we like to build the effort as we go along but keep the rest to 10 seconds. It's a great tune-up set before a race and a quick way to get in 1000 yards.

After our swim, we enjoyed one of my prepped meals (arugula, lentil and quinoa "Salad" with an egg, potato and veg casserole). We then packed up the car, made a quick stop at the Amar European grocery store in Jacksonville and then finished our long drive to Haines City. In total it took us about 10 hours of driving but thankfully, no major delays for a stress free 1 1/2 days of traveling. 



After arriving to Lake Eva (race venue), we changed into our cycling gear for a spin on the race course.



We rode 26-miles of the race course by starting the course from the transition area and then getting off the course after mile 10 to get back on the course after mile 45. It felt great to spin the legs and move some blood. After the ride we went for a quick run (~10 minutes). We included a few "efforts" on the bike to open up the engine.

Around 4:30pm, we checked into our rental home, unpacked, settled in, had dinner and got to bed around 9:30pm. It feels great to be at the race venue and (finally) be just a few days away from kicking off our 2018 triathlon racing season!!