Expo

I spent most of this day around the expo in City Park.

In the morning I took advantage of the Gatorade Bag Check - an area in City Park where Gatorade reps would watch a bag of your items (clothes) while you swam. I wanted to find out what the water temperature was like, and get in a brief swim, so I checked my items and headed to the lake, where there was a short course of buoys marking a rectangular swim (well, three sides of a rectangle). I waded out into the water and started, pleasantly surprised to find the water warmer than I had expected. The lake was much clearer than lakes I'm used to - I could see the bottom which was around 20 feet deep! Overall, with the clear water and pleasant temperature, I think the swim will be quite nice. Afterwards, I talked to two other athletes who had a few questions about the swim course. I think they thought that was the actual course, but I told them it was far too short, the current marking was just for swim warmups.

I wandered through the expo again, stopping to pick up pamphlets and product samples, and yes, I got a few more IMCdA logo items. ;) I listened to parts of two speaker's panels, where pros held a Q&A session. The first speaker was Chris Legh, who talked at length on salt and electrolyte intake. He was the unfortunate victim of dehydration at IM Hawaii one year, which hospitalized him. He's also had trouble with cramping, so he participated in studies which found he was just losing far more than the normal amount of electrolytes through sweat - so now, he's upped his salt/eletrolyte intake for events in hot and humid conditions. Next up were a group of four pros who answered questions about their training; however all were quite cagey apparently not wanting to reveal too much info to their competitors!

It is getting more exciting here, just wandering around. I find my eye drawn to everyone's wrists, looking for the silver bracelet I am wearing.

Later in the afternoon Jen and Alexandra arrived, so I met up with them for dinner at the Dockside, a restaurant in the Coeur D'Alene Resort. It was great to see them, as I've been mostly keeping to myself these past few days. We walked around afterwards, wandering a few blocks and stopping at a candy store. Back at City Park, we noticed the swim course appeared to be fully marked with yellow and orange buoys.

We returned to their hotel and played Killer Bunnies. Now I am a fan of board games and card games, so I really liked Killer Bunnies after only playing it once. It is up there with Illuminati for wackiness and entertainment. Mike and Francesca arrived and we all hung out for a bit before I left to get to sleep.