Michael: Travel Time

When the sun is high
Is the time to move about
And enjoy the day.

Friday, December 21, 2018

One great thing about living in Southern California is the ability to race just about any distance any time of year. One of the perplexing things about living here is planning when to leave for a race, particularly if involves a drive of an hour or more.

Why is that? Because, paraphrasing Rudy Guiliani, miles are not miles. And nowhere is that more true than in Southern California.

Take my race in San Diego in a couple of weeks. It’s about 120 miles from where I live. It starts at 6:30 a.m. Let’s say I need an hour to do all the preliminary prep stuff before that. That would mean arriving at 5:30 and leaving home at 3:30. In order to get dressed and have breakfast before that I would need to get up at three. That’s damned early.

So what are my alternatives? I have two; One, stay at my sister’s in San Clemente which would leave me only an hour drive time to the race meaning I could get up at a more decent 4 a.m.

The trade-off would be driving there the day before, and that’s where the devil that’s SoCal traffic comes into play. I work until 1 p.m. and get home at about three. At that time of day the drive to San Clemente isn’t going to be pretty. But better to sit in a car the day before a race instead of the morning of.

Another alternative would be to stay at a hotel near the race sight. Then it would almost be liking sleeping in for me. But on a Friday afternoon that could prove to be a very tortuous sit in the car to get there. Also, races are expensive enough without adding any additional costs if they can be avoided.

So to my sister’s it is. It’s not ideal, but it’ll work.

Planning race travel is just about as arduous a task as any other aspect of ultra racing and almost as important to get both lucky and right as just about any other aspect of race preparation.