Gym Class Dropout

I found out that there are over 700 people racing on Sunday! This race is bigger than I thought! It's good because I'm less likely to finish last...but that also means there are a lot of people fighting for space in the water and transition area. The race starts at 8 am with the sprint distance athletes going first. I'm one of the last waves to go in the water around 8:30 and I'm not sure how I feel about watching all of those people go in before me while I stand on the beach terrified! I've gotten a lot of great advice for calming myself down once I get in the water which is where I risk freaking out and letting my breathing get out of control (very uncomfortable feeling when swimming is all about rhythm and making the motions very fluid!). Hopefully I can channel all of those people durig the swim! I know that once I make it through the first transition on get into a rhythm on the bike that I will be ok. The weather will still impact my performance though. It's raining right now so that will get some of the heat and humidity out of the air. Sunday is still forecasted for 86 and sunny. That's still really hot but its certainly better than 96 that we hit yesterday! If the rain lets up tonight I'm going to go on a short bike ride to make sure everything is working (I had trouble with my pedal releasing properly earlier this week). I'm also going to lay out all of my transition gear to make sure I dont' forget anything. Less than 48 hours to go!