Never being to New Hampshire before in my life, except maybe once or twice driving through (which really doesn't count) it was a very long long trip up here. We left around 2:30 & pulled into the hotel at 10:15. Thanks Mapquest for the wacky directions, but we also did have GPS, which everyone knows I hate, but it did keep us occupied & laughing since we didn't really want to follow the voice on the TomTom. I thought at any moment she would ask us if we had any interest in following her directions & boot us out of the truck.
After a few stops, yes one at McDonald's - hey I had chicken nuggets, not a Big Mac! Check out the pic of what we saw in New Haven, CT. Let me tell you people, Jersey is everywhere!
One more stop at the drive-thru Starbucks (thank God) in Springfield, MA & we were back on the road. Sad to say that we did not spot any moose along the way, or any wildlife for that matter, lame! As we got to New Hampshire we found a Dunkin Donuts, yes we are eating like crap the whole way up here, but I'm going to burn it all off tomorrow, right? Ah, no. (Warning, this is not the 70.3 Ironman diet people!) I get out of the car & I immediately freeze up. When I left New Jersey, it was 95 degrees on the trusty truck thermometer. When I opened the door in New Hampshire, lets just say it was almost 40 degrees cooler. I felt like I was in Canada with a tank top on! Freezing!
Back in the car we realize we are almost to the hotel, and almost out of gas we roll into Meredith & find our hotel. Very cute & quite charming & so not New Jersey as judging by this photo:
How nice is that? Yeah, this store wouldn't last 2 minutes in NJ! So after a good night's sleep we make our way into town to find toothpaste, yes it was the one thing we forgot, postcards, lottery tickets & breakfast. We have our priorities you know! After collecting all of the above we find ourself a diner without any clean knives (hey we got there in between dishwasher loads), then make our way over to Ellacoya Park to get my race packet. After a few wrong places we were directed to the pick up spot, just 10 short miles away. Here I am with my number.
& as long as I finish, I think I'm going to be ok! We've seen a bunch of people from New Jersey (yay!) 2 from Monmouth Beach & 1 from Belford, so it's nice to be amongst my peeps! You can track me on race day (I will be the slow moving blip) on www.ironman.com . Hopefully, if I make it to the finish, I'll have enough in me to blog all about it tomorrow. Fingers crossed!!!!!!!!!
Thanks everyone for all the texts, facebook posts & well wishes this week. I will be thinking about you all as I crawl across the finish line, which by the way, I read in the rules is perfect legal & counts!
