the final necessities

Given it’s almost race day, that means it is essentials crunch time!  While we have most of what we need, this weekend was time to lock down the final essentials.  During what was easily one of the heaviest torrential downpours I’d ever seen, Mark and I decided to head to Sports Authority to pick up what we still needed.  I should mention that it wasn’t a torrential downpour when we left to go to the store; we just unsuccessfully tried to beat the storm.  Which wouldn’t be a problem if one drove everywhere, but these days we tend to walk most places (not that we have a car anyway) and this place happened to be about three-quarters of a mile away from our apartment.  But at least we had rain jackets!

On the list of things to get was googles and sunglasses for me (my current goggles are terrible – for some reason the left eye just leaks constantly and I hadn’t already purchased sport sunglasses but Mark had), and then fog resistant goggle cleaner and body glide for both of us.  We also picked up some sunscreen, but not from Sports Authority…I still have some dignity and just can’t pay what they want to charge for that!  One thing that is still on our list for this week are race number belts, which Sports Authority did not have, leaving me to decide that they are not, in fact, the Authority on Sports as their name would suggest.

I am also really excited because my wetsuit finally arrived today.  Yeah Leftlanesports.com!  Now I can officially say that I do love this website and they are legit.  I ordered this thing last Sunday and it already traveled all the way from Cali (by ground transportation) and arrived in just one week (well and one day, but can you really count weekends in terms of delivery times?).  So, if you want a referral code, let me know :) But for real, then we can both have $10!

Naturally as soon as I had package in hand I had to try this thing on.  

I have watched people try these things on before and seenthem struggle, but I don't think I have ever seen anyone struggle like I did.  It was so hard to get on, especially once I had to try to get over the hump that is my butt.  It just did not want to go on.  Then once I got over that hump getting the thing on my arms and up to my shoulders was a whole 'nother deal.  All I can say is it's a good thing the swim is first and you get to start in this thing, rather than have to try to pull it on during the race at some point.  

In the end, I managed to put it all the way on, and man is it tight!  Everything I didn't want to believe about what people said about wetsuits is true - they are super tight EVERYWHERE, and also super constrictive in the shoulder region (but if you want to improve your posture, man is it good at that!).  It is definitely going to take some getting used to in terms of swimming in this thing, but I can definitely tell it will provide some warmth and buoyancy.  It's actually quite heavy, and I was sweating as soon as I put that thing on.  

Bring on the swim.