Well, let it be said that the folks who live in Alaska seem to have a greatly different perspective on what "close by" is than those of us living in the continental US. Roly was wise enough to actually look at the distances between the airport, hotel and race site. All in all, if we were to stay in Valdez where our hotel was (as per recommended by the organizers), fly in and out of Anchorage and drive to the race site, we would need to drive 1400 miles in a span of 3 days. Somewhere in there we'd have to fit in a 100 mile bike race. Apparently there's an impassable mountain range between Valdez and Anchorage Expedia doesn't know about and the race organizers don't seem to give a shit about. Nice.
So some last minute itinerary changes and the Valdez hotel is cancelled and we are now staying at the Econolodge at the Ted Stevens Anchorage Airport. Sure it's 70 bucks more per night, but now we have wireless in the rooms, and we'll save a metric fuckton in gas because we trimmed the driving down to a shade over 200 miles for the whole trip. As Roly said, "it just wouldn't be a cycling trip without something fucking up".
Other than that, everything else seems to be in order. I'm riding pretty strong, gear is all functioning properly, and Ian will be driving us to the airport in his truck (bike crates don't fit in cabs). All that's left to do is pack the bike in my crate and do a final gear check.
Ran a half marathon distance last night (13.3 miles). I sort of chilled out in the back half because my knee was starting to have weird sensations that knees have when you ramp up mileage. Normally this wouldn't bother me, but I didn't want to risk being hurt for the race on Sat. I definitely need to run more though. Steelhead isn't that far away.