Day 2, Brazil

Today was a typical pre-race day for us: race briefing, light training, relaxing. Oh, and enjoying a crazy Brazilian street parade!

The course was closed for an hour this afternoon so with a motorbike escort, we were able to keep the beach-goers off the streets (well, most of them...) and ride a few laps of the course. The bike is fairly technical, with 4 x 1000m loops. I can't even begin to describe how short that feels! The run is two out-and-back 650m laps which seemed equally short and fast. We swam in the hotel pool and our beach this morning and I am glad we did as the race site was packed beyond belief this afternoon.


Kerry's bike is still missing, but the good news is that it is confirmed to have arrived in Brazil...but just not at our hotel yet (I guess it's good news that it's somewhere in this country of 186 million people...) It's 8pm now so we're still holding out hope that it will show up before bed tonight. She has arranged a back-up bike though, just in case. It's a little on the small side but she cranked up the seatpost and slid the seat back so it's reasonably close to her normal position. Despite riding the midget bike and getting a flat (from a KNIFE on the road), she was her usual giggly self.

We're all really looking forward to racing hard tomorrow. There will be six teams, each with three women: Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Germany, USA, and us. An estimated 30,000 people will be lining the course so it should make for an incredible experience. Don't tell anyone, but our strategy is to pretend we are Brazilian so everyone will be screaming for US!

More tomorrow, post-race!

The breakfast buffet, after Kerry paid a visit.

Lunch today (seriously).

Rachel and her "friend".

And the news station wanted to make a "story" out of my blog: