Pre-Race Buena Vista

So we were to stay 2 nights in Buena Vista before the race started on August 21st.  Our bus dropped us off at the Central Colorado Regional Airport which was over a mile from the Lakeside Motel which we were staying.  This isn't usually a big deal, but we had 4 bags with us, 2 which were carry-on rolling bags and over half the distance was on a gravel path/road.  My Dockers bag held up well, but if I am ever in the market for another bag, I will be looking for one with much larger wheels!  We finally jumped on some pavement and were walking through a small residential section of Buena Vista when Jackie said "I wonder what these people are thinking when they see us walking down the street with all this baggage"  a moment later a woman and her husband asked us where we were going and if we needed a ride.  I jumped right on that, so we threw our stuff in the trunk of their car, explained what the hell we were doing and 5 mins later we were at the hotel giving them thanks and were checking in for the night.

Shortly after arriving we headed out for our first run at 8000+ feet.  We went down Main Street and into the trails where the race would be starting.  It was so much better then running in downtown Denver that I wished we could have kept on going, but with the race starting in two days we had to keep it easy and only ran 35 mins.

To stick with the routine, after we ran, we showered and headed to a brewpub.  The fact that Buena Vista had a brewpub was amazing because this is a pretty small town with a population under 2,200.  The Eddyline Restaurant & Brewery did not disappoint.  They had a well rounded beer selection and some tasty food.  Since the TRANSROCKIES race basically doubles the population of Buena Vista, there was a short wait for a table at Eddyline, so we made our way to the bar and ordered a round  of the Pine Creek Porter.  After about 25 mins we sat and order up some grub, we started with the Dough Twists and then I had the Cheddar Penne Macaroni with Salad and Jackie had the Creamy Pesto Pasta with a Salad.  During dinner we also sampled the South Main Stout and Crank Yanker IPA.  And just for the record everything we consumed at Eddyline was great.

August 20th.  This was our last night before the race and our last night in Buena Vista.  We headed out around 9 a.m. to get an easy 25 min run in then walked over to the Buena Vista Roastery and picked up some coffee.  From there we walked over to the trail and checked out some of the sites including an old mining cave entrance.  We went back to the hotel for a bit then headed back to Eddyline for lunch.  We again had a good meal and were satisfied with our last meal before the TRANSROCKIES race catering took over at dinner.  On our way back to the motel we stopped by the Buena Vista Heritage Museum to pick up our race packets which included two huge bags to lug around all of our 'stuff' for the week.  We also were given a race shirt, hat, Peet shoe dryers, and some other miscellaneous schwag.  Now that we had our race bags we had some work to do, we had to fit all of our gear for the week in these bags.  The positive thing is all we had to do once packed was leave them in front of the motel on race morning and a race truck would come by and pick them up and have them for us at the end of Stage 1.  They also took our other luggage and put it on a truck and it would make its way to the final stage where we would pick it up.

This shows how big these bags were!

After some packing and some relaxing it was finally time to get on with the pre-race dinner/info session.  We made our way back down Main Street and what would become a common occurence all week, we were one of the first to arrive at dinner.  The pre-race dinner was something we would have to get used to because we had alot of it all week, fajitas.  There was a buffet line set-up with chicken, beef, onions, peppers, cheese and all the other mexican fixens.  There were also cookies...and I like cookies.  We bellied up to a table and met a team that consisted of a dude from Colorado and a woman from South Africa, after that we met a big group that was from Washington D.C.  A little while later Thor and Jay of Team HumpMe & DumpMe showed up with their wives.

After dinner we went through the first pre-race course preview and got a bit of an overview of all things TRANSROCKIES.  We were finally feeling like the race was on and went back to the motel with full stomachs and excitment for what the first race day would bring.  All that was left to do was finish packing and get a good nights sleep, especially since this would be our last night during the race that we had a real bed in a room...  Stay Tuned for Stage 1 Buena Vista to Red Bridge.  In the meantime enjoy some photos.

Some Buena Vista scenery

Abandoned Mine

Cool old place

COFFEE!

Some more old town.

Inside Eddyline

Lunch @ Eddyline