Five Brilliant Things I Did At Wildflower

5. Two of the elastic cords that hold the tent fabric to the rigid metal poles snapped while I was setting up, so the tent was very saggy. It was windy the night before the race, which made the tent flap around noisily. At 11:00 at night, I got out of the tent, grabbed one of the poles from the outer tent fly and jammed it across the inside of the tent. It created a rigid beam which stopped the wind flapping. Brilliant.

4. I thought I would give myself a treat by packing some mini-snickers bars for the bike ride. But then I thought that if I ate one Snickers, I would eat them all so I only packed one. Sure enough, at mile 25 I stopped for my treat and started digging through my bag praying there were more Snickers in there. Alas, I only had the one so I couldn't make myself sick on chocolate. Brilliant.

3. The day was starting to warm up by the time I hit T1, and I noticed pretty much everyone was leaving on their bikes in short sleeves. I thought it might still be chilly with the wind and decided not to do what everyone else was doing; I put a long-sleeve shirt on under my jersey. It WAS cold on the bike but I felt pretty comfortable. Brilliant.

2. I taped an elevation map to my bike so I would know when I needed to conserve my energy, and when I could afford to let myself go a bit. Brilliant.

1. The night before the race, I put my tube of Chamois Butt'r cream in my sleeping bag. In the morning, when it was time to lube up all my nether regions, the cream was at body temperature and NOT freezing cold like the outside air. BRILLIANT!