Week 7 - Day 2 - 857 days remaining

I will have more to put in later today, but I had to write while the excitement is still coursing through my veins, which actually is making it difficult to just sit here and write.  The interview was this morning and I had a lovely chat with a representative of the Clipper race.  Apparently, I didn't say anything too alarming as they will be issuing me a contract to look over. It won't get here for a couple of weeks, but it's a "done deal".  Barring injury or illness, or my doctor nixing my participation, it's a go.

I find myself with a huge mixture of feelings; excitement, anxiety, anticipation, and trepidation.  My mind is racing, creating lists of things to accomplsih, things I have to do to prepare.  For the next few years, my life is going to be eating, breathing, thinking about preparing for and then participating in this race.

So what are the next steps?

1. Get my doctor to fill out the Medical Report Form
2. Receive, examine, fill out, and return the contract to them

And then there's the ongoing things such as getting into and maintaining physical conditioning, study, plan, acquire the things I'll need such as sea boots and skills, plan my trips to England for the various training.

It looks like I'll end up making three trips to England.  The first trip will be to do stage 1 & stage 2 of the training.  They suggest that I take some time between them, so it will likely be a 3 week trip with a week of bumming about Europe between stages 1 and 2.

The second trip to England will be to do stage 3 plus what's known as "Crew Allocation Day" - that's the full day extravaganza in which they reveal which people are assigned to which boat/skipper.  I might do Stage 3 the week before Crew Allocation Day or possibly the week after.  Although they do live broadcast the activities, I'd really like to be there for it.

The third trip will be to do Stage 4 training as well as any auxiliary training, boat prep, boat staging, and then the start of round the world.  That's about 3 weeks of time before the actual start of the race and will basically mark the beginnig of the race time for me as I won't be returning home until one of completing the race or I'm forced to return home due to some sort of life event.

So since this morning I’ve been in a bit of a fog as thoughts of, “What HAVE I gotten myself into???” Swirl through my head.  To make it even worse, I wandered around YouTube watching various videos about the race.  I like that they don’t sugarcoat it.  They talk about the good stuff, but they also talk about injuries, of the cold and uncomfortable bits, or the hot and uncomfortable bits.  They talk about a boat where there was a bit of a philosophical disagreement, etc.

Then, for fun, I laid out the length of the boat.  It seems like the length of our condo is about 2/3 the length of the boat - but we only have 2 people living here, and the condo is a lot wider and isn’t as cramped inside.

Oy!  What HAVE I gotten into?

Tomorrow is a visit with the physical trainer to get that started and a trip to the doctor to get the medical form signed off.

Step by step...