Friday March 27th - Jim Estes promised me mud. For a few days I had faith and believed him but my hopes and dreams were crushed today at the course preview. No mud, and what little there had been they were covering it with rock and dirt and rolling it out. What a disappointment. On the flip side this is probably about the toughest course I've ever seen. Turns out that a 20m hill is a pretty big hill. I guess it just doesn't register until you see the hill. The start is not a gradual uphill into a sharp left hand turn then a plummet to the bottom of a 600m long hill, then a short section of flat before the climb back to the top of the course. After 6 laps of that the finish comes right off the top of the course and continues a steep climb up. That should take any kind of sprint out of anyone trying to finish fast. So yeah, it's tough. Guess I should have been running more hills. We'll see what happens.

Other than that it was an uneventful day of sitting in the hotel like usual before a race. Pretty boring. We did play a heated game of Rummy in the evening of which I lost...badly. Hope that isn't indicative of tomorrow.

Well, here we go. Tomorrow is what we came here to do.