Just chillaxing here in the hotel in Princeton, N.J. Had a fairly smooth drive down. There was one incident involving me, a police officer and a speeding ticket in New York. But other than that it was pain-free.

Made it to the Mercer park for some laps of the course. Dudes – this course is awesome. If you do one travel weekend next season – make it to this race. The course is good for everyone. Basically flat (there are some false flat sections). Fast. Challenging but doable sand pit. Some fun twists and turns. An improved fly-over. This course has something for everyone.

Conditions are moist. The ground is quite saturated so by my race tomorrow it will be nice and greasy. I don’t mind this. I’ll definitely take mud and wet grass over hills and running. The sand pit is crazy – seems like they put a hose on it for days – one section is like riding in a sand bog.

Had a pretty uneventful evening. We did get sucked into the Whole Food vortex. But we set a 30 minute time limit. This helped. Got some basics – we came fairly well-prepared food-wise. Marc and I went over to the number pick-up. We thought it was from 6 – 9, turns out it was from 6 -8! We arrived at 8. Luckily Louise, a UCI official from Canada was there, so she gave us our numbers. Nice to have this done and not have to worry about it for tomorrow.

Had a smooth time riding the course today. Got some pointers from Marc. Checked the sections that will be “strong” for me and the sections where I’ll have to dig a little bit deeper and really focus. Saw lots of friendly faces. Pretty cool to see the little kids out riding with Ben Turner from Clif Bar.

I’ll post up tomorrow night. Stay tuned. Send me some speedy vibes at 1:45. My number is 20 – a lucky number.