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I’ve got a 4 a.m. wake-up for a quick breakfast, then picking up Gabi and heading to the start. Jimmy gave me specific instructions not to push it tomorrow, especially on the long climb for the first third of the race. It won’t be easy to watch people run off ahead of me, but I’m gonna try. I have to keep in mind that this is more of a “training run” than a “race” for me. I can’t afford to have to have a long recovery, or worse, get injured. So that’s the plan.

Today was a pretty fun day. It took Gabi and I about 4.5 hours to get to Bishop, but it was an easy and relatively pretty drive. We stopped briefly at Red Rock Canyon State Park to stretch our legs and take a couple pictures.

Along the way, the mountains to the west were covered in snow at the top. It was beautiful (even if you can’t tell in this photo).

One highlight of the drive for me was passing through Lone Pine, the town along the Badwater course immediately before you start the climb up to Whitney Portal. The Dow Villa Motel is the race HQ in Lone Pine. It brought back fun memories of being there last year – and made me excited for this year (big announcement about that coming next week).

Then we got to Bishop. Race check-in was a breeze. The race t-shirt is bright purple, which might be a little tough to wear, but if I can wear a pink hat, I can wear a purple shirt. Then we headed to the pre-race dinner and briefing.

At the dinner, we met up with Michael and Kista, two twitter friends, Sally, a new-to-the-ultra-scene stud who came in second at the PCT50 last weekend, and Robert and Howie, who I met at the AC100 trail work the other weekend. I ate more than my share of pasta, salad and garlic bread. The race director, Marie, gave the briefing.

I’ve emailed with Marie a few times recently and she’s been great about responding to all my questions. The briefing went fine, the most interesting points were that McGee Creek is flowing and we’ll have to get a little wet crossing it at mile 15 and 37.5 and that there is snow on the trail in the 6 mile Edison Loop. Her crew went up yesterday to mark the course and took this picture to show the conditions:

Yep, snow. About one to 1.5 miles of it. I’ve never done a water crossing or run on a snowy trail during a race. I’m excited for both!

Wish me luck! Post-race report to come…