WWR Day 0: Stupid *&$%^& terrorists,

After crashing for our last full night of sleep for awhile, the four of us awoke and started pre-race preparations. The three of us girls all took ice baths (what can I say? we are masochists) then we went to find yet another yummy restaurant to eat at and then went shopping. Ten gallons of Gatorade from Target was probably a little excessive. Then, instead of being reasonable and going to Safeway, we went and gallavanted around Whole Foods buying organic apples and peanut butter. Whole Foods has its critics, but for a bunch of Iowa kids who only have a natural food store one tenth the size of WF to play in, this was like a trip to the amusement park. Whole Foods was the last good thing that happened that day.

On our way up to Fort Collins, I get a phone call from Lisa. Apparently, after spending three hours in the security line at the Seattle airport, she missed her flight. Stupid British terrorists. And the British just had to pick August 10th to arrest them. So since everyone and their mother missed their flights, standby was a mess too. It was not looking good. I called up Anna, one of our volunteers who was traveling with Melissa, and said "Hey, I know you have a fractured elbow, but can you run if necessary?" She was awesome and totally stepped up to the plate to run 14 miles at the last minute. Did I mention she had a fractured elbow? This whole time, I was still hoping Lisa might at least make it on Friday and even if she couldn't run officially, she could at least run my 7.5 mile leg with me at midnight.

Anyways, this was only the beginning of the mess. Silly me, I actually had an hour by hour schedule for coordinating people on Thursday. Lisa was supposed to meet Al and Caroline at the airport. Al and Caroline happen to be the only two on the entire trip without a cell phone (get with the ages people!). I paged them at the airport with a message that Lisa wasn't making it, but they didn't get that message. So they waited around. Meanwhile Joe is waiting around the train station, the rendevous point with Melissa and Anna. Except the train was stuck somewhere. They were supposed to get in at 7 pm and didn't actually get in until 11:30. At the end of it all, Joe, Caroline, and Al drove up to Fort Collins without the girls, and Jessica (saint that she is) drove all the way back down to Denver at 11:30 to pick up Melissa and Anna.

I would like to note that we actually were going to decorate our vehicles, but once everything started going downhill, that sort of became unimportant. So we were like a stealth team, keeping our scientist identities secret from the rest of the world. Except, of course, for when we were wearing our bright yellow scientist t-shirts...

When we went to sleep that night at 10, only 7 members of the team were actually in Fort Collins. Nerve-wracking? Yes, one might say that. But if I have learned anything in life, it is that things usually work out. At 5am the next morning, all 12 team members and one volunteer stumbled out of the hotel to load up the vans.

Next up: We send Teresa off to begin getting our asses over the pass!