Today Is The Day

I have a feeling that today is the day. The day that Trans Iowa registration closes. There are only fifteen available spots left as of last night and when todays mail arrives at the shop, I'm betting that it exceeds that number in post cards for entry.

What to do? With only fifteen spots left, if I get say.......21 cards, what will I do? Well, here is the plan. The Post Office will decide. Say what? Yeah.................the U.S.P.S. !

See, the ever efficient mail carrier almost always bundles mail together while sorting it. Lots of letters going to the same address will almost certainly get bound together with that wonderful, handy little tool, the rubber band. I will accept the first fifteen cards off the top of the stack into the roster. All fifteen will have been randomly shuffled into the stack by a hard working U.S.P.S. employee insuring that I have nothing to do with which fifteen get in or which of the remaining cards go into the Waiting List.

Waiting List? Yes............a waiting list. You see, the fervor to get in on a helping of 300 plus miles of gravely goodness might seem like a great idea right now to some, but apparently later on some thinking must be done, since we get drop outs along the way. Typically for a roster of this size I would expect up to at least ten drops before the last month leading up to the event. In the case of someone dropping out, I would then contact the next card sender in the stack by e-mail to see if they are still interested. If not, I would move to the next card, and so on. So, if you really, really want to do Trans Iowa and find yourself just on the outside looking in after today, hold tight. There will be dropouts.

On the subject of dropouts: There will be a significant number of drop outs in the last days leading up to the event. Reality and perceptions will get the best of some folks. It happens everytime we run this thing. It'll be exceptionally bad if the weather is forecast to be crummy for the event. For both T.I.V2 and T.I.V3 we had 20 plus folks not show up the day of the event......without calling, without e-mailing.......just no shows! Let me state for the record that I will be making note of that if it happens this year that way. Please let us know if you are not coming. Even if it's the last day before the event. It makes a huge difference to me. Really!

Okay, enough of that! Now I suspect about 100 folks are laying winter training programs down on their computers, PDA's, logbooks, or at least in their minds eye. Some of you might be wondering if you will be able to get any outdoor training in since winter is on its way. Well here is a great tip on how to keep your tootsies warm in severe cold. Check it out!

In the meantime, look for a roster update later this evening. It might be pretty late, as I'm 'spectin' a package to arrive that'll require my full attention. More later!