Collegiate Nationals Part I

So, the day finally came for my last collegiate nationals in a Cal Bear uniform. Over the past weekend, the Cal triathlon team traveled to Lubbock, Texas to race at Collegiate Nationals in the hope of defending their overall team title. I also clung to a glimmer of hope that I would finally win that elusive individual crown, but realistically I just wanted to give it my all, help out the team and, in the process, garner a top 5 placing.

The travel to the race was anything but ordinary, as is usually the case with me. After a smooth trip from SFO to Memphis, (yes, you actually passed Texas to go to Memphis because I booked my flight using miles) the second half of my trip was anything but uneventful. The culprit was a hydraulic system malfunction that delayed our flight for 3 hours. In that span we boarded and un-boarded the plane twice before the problem was finally solved. The unnerving part of the whole ordeal once the hydraulics were fixed was the fact that the airline company needed volunteers to offer up their flight due to the intense storm that created weight restrictions for the plane. It also added a one hour loop to our flight to avoid the weather system. It was not an enjoyable flight with all of the turbulence and the crackling of lightning illuminating the intense clouds that we flew through. Nevertheless, we finally arrived in Lubbock at 2:30am! I would have been stranded at the airport had it not been for one of the triathletes from Auburn, Nate Robinson, who graciously offered me a ride to my hotel and saved my butt. However, the night was still young for everything else to go smoothly. Upon checking into my hotel, my room key refused to work. Seriously? It turned out that the battery in the door card system was out. The guy working the desk had to call a maintenance guy to get a master card to over ride the system. I finally crawled into bed at a little past 4 in the morning, just wondering what I had done to deserve such bad luck. However, despite only 4 hours of sleep I woke up the next morning pretty refreshed and the rest of the pre-race day went by smoothly.