Getting Ready for the NJ Devilman

As I sit here in bed at the Fairfield Inn in the lovely town of Millville, NJ, I am finding it hard to believe my first triathlon of the season is tomorrow morning. Although the gear laid out systematically around the room does remind me of it pretty regularly. Tomorrow is the NJ Devilman Half-Lite, which is something short of a half-iron distance with a 0.8 mile swim, a 40.3 mile bike and a 8.8 mile run. I do not have that nervousness and anxiety that I used to have in years past. Granted it is only my “C” race of the season, but that never mattered before.

I think the experience I have gained in the past few years has now given me a bit of confidence that I didn’t have back then. Tomorrow is a test run for me. Testing out my early season conditioning, what I need to work on and my first real run of my nutrition plan. I am eager to get all that worked out now so I can just get my mind and body ready for the big show in July. That is what really matters. If I screw something up or have some mechanical incident, now would be the best time to get that out to the way. I hope I am that lucky.

We headed down here around 8:30-9am this morning. Delayed a bit by a RV and truck fire on the PA turnpike for an hour we didn’t get to Cape May until almost 1PM. We headed out to Cape May Point for some lunch at the Cape May Point General Store and Restaurant. It was pretty good. They only had one vegan platter, but it was pretty good and I was happy. They also have smoothies, juices, and wheatgrass shots. Denise had a wheatgrass shot which was actually pretty tasty. Lunch was really good and it was nice sitting out on the sunny deck which was protected from the gusty winds.

After lunch we attempted to go the beach, but the wind was so bad we got sandblasted right off. We walked around some of the inner streets of Cape May for a while. We then made our way to the hotel in Millville to check-in which was an hour from Cape May. The hotel was back off the main drag in Millville which was nice since the town was mostly a conglomeration of every “big box” store you could think of.  The hotel was triathlon central with every other car having a bike mounted on it. It is always such the scene.

We settled into the room for a bit and then made our way out for dinner. We found two possible places to eat: a thai place and a vegan place, called Wildflower, further downtown. We went to the vegan place which was in a shady part of town and somewhat hard to find. It was a bit small and kind of a hippy-style place. There were 3 guys and a woman in the tiny open kitchen which was quite amazing how they could work like that. We had some veggie noodle soup, and black bean hummus burrito and a quinoa salad. All was pretty good. I topped off the meal with a peanut butter granola bar.

We headed back to the hotel after dinner and I started organizing my stuff for tomorrow morning. 5am comes around quickly. My cold has dwindled down to a little cough here and there, but overall I am feeling pretty good. I hope it goes for good tomorrow. My only real anxiety about tomorrow is the water temperature. It is going to be in the 40’s tomorrow morning, so it could be a bit chilly tomorrow.

Time to go racing!