Lowered Expectations

Well, in an amusing bit of morning reading, I searched for "Lake Geneva Race Reports", just to get a little familiar with what to expect this weekend. The resounding opinion of the internet at large is that the race director is a real tool. The race, which has 4 distances, from Super Sprint to Half Iron, is famously disorganized, often poorly marked, and often poorly measured - in fact, I guess last year HIM swimmers were coming in in, like, 17 minutes. The course was at off by as much as half! That's kind of hysterical. He's so bad, though, that USAT revoked its affiliation with him. Cripes.

Anyway, the general consensus is that the venue is beautiful (and is probably the reason why the race continues to be successful), but to "lower your expections" about the race. Since I'm just doing the Sprint, I don't need to worry much about aid stations, etc., and I won't be coming into a chaotic transition area off of the Oly or HIM course, with the shorter course athletes milling about. It is probably a solid affirmation that I should use this first race as a warm-up for next weekend's "A" race, and I'll just take it as it comes and do my best out there, remembering that I can't control anything but what I'm doing. I'll have to accommodate whatever mileage the swim course ends up being, and I suppose I'll trust my Garmin more for actual race distances, to get a sense for actual performance.

So anyway. I hope I'm not headed into disaster, and it'll help to revise my race morning expectations so that if there is a lot of disorganization I can take it in stride and go with the flow, rather than get frustrated or rattled. We shall see!