It was still dark outside at 4:00 am when my alarm started blaring. The red and blue police lights from the street below swirled through the room of the dingy hotel just off of Lombard Street in San Francisco where I had spent the night. I could hear the sound of cars, horns, people all through the night. On top of it all…I had what some of us triathletes call the “pre-race jitters.” “Did I sleep at all?”, I asked myself as I slowly got out of bed.