Quick mile before my tours today. Feeling recovered.

Did the tour of Fort Sumter this morning - a boat ride out to the island, an hour of walking around the site and then back. This was the perfect length for me, not too long and drawn out but still fascinating. I learned that the first shots fired in the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter.

Then in the afternoon I headed to the food/culinary tour I had booked. The food was amazing, but the tour guide was ehhhh. I didn't love her style. She kind of floored everyone when she genuinely didn't know where Idaho was (a couple in the group were from Idaho). Everyone was trying to explain geographically and she just laughed it off like yep, I'm not so smart. And there was a lady from Louisiana who kept interjecting about Louisiana and cajun food - everyone was like - we get it, you grew up in Louisiana, please stop talking haha.

The actual food was a ton of small plate tastings from the region - we had fried green tomatoes with pimento cheese, shrimp and grits (made with gouda cheese OMG), fried chicken and sweet potato waffles, succotash with fried oysters, duck confit, poached shrimp and some sort of cake at a local bakery (I only ate the icing). I got a craft cocktail at the last restaurant that was made with Tito's vodka, blueberry reduction, cane sugar and lavender bitters. So good.
All in all I loved it - food tours may be my new thing when visiting a new area.

Race Report is up!

Exploring Charleston today!

Slow mile before heading to Charleston for a few days.

Walking up and down King Street in Charleston. Had a great sushi dinner.

Good swim - very slow current compared to years past. I was expecting closer to 30 minutes, but 35 is still definitely faster than I would be without any current.

Deceivingly tough course. The "big hills" were all sustained, long climbs. And we all know how much climbs slow me down LOL! I was expecting closer to 16 mph average but am definitely happy with how this turned out. Fun course.

Then I fell apart! I 100% anticipated the heat, so I can't be surprised that I walked a lot of this. I ran my intervals for the first 2 miles then it was just too much. Got dizzy before mile 2 and was genuinely afraid of a health issue. 99 degree heat index when I finished. Yes disappointed, but no not surprised with the heat. Maybe some day I can find a race with temps in the 70s where you don't risk hypothermia out of the water. I'd shine there :)

T1

T2

The insanely awful walk to pick up my bike - and back. More in my race report, but this is likely the biggest reason I wouldn't recommend this race, especially to solo racers. The logistics were a nightmare.

Quick mile before heading to Augusta.

Lots of walking involved for bike drop off. Lots.

Treadmill after work

NEWS TIME! I got the call from HR this afternoon with the job offer! Ya'll know I was going to ask for a little salary bump, even though they indicated they usually keep people level for lateral moves. But to my surprise, they offered me ABOVE what I was going to ask for. I was going to ask for 5%, and it ended up being a little above 6% and I just about cried. I was expecting to have to fight for 2-3%.  Based on the conversation, it sounds like my soon-to-be-boss advocated for bumping me up to this number when she didn't have to. So happy to have this process completed. I officially transition on Oct. 7. 

With Ellie Mae

Trainer

Met up with the Bumble triathlete last night. I figured why not, it's taper week (I'm bored) and if nothing else can make a new friend. Nice guy, we had a lot to talk about. And the funniest thing EVER is when we were explaning where we live and work, we slowly realized that WE LIVE IN THE SAME NEIGHBORHOOD! Hahahaaaa he literally lives in the apartment complex that connects to my townhome community. Too funny. 

Interview #6 this afternoon, and I am so not impressed by our talent acquisition team. Yesterday afternoon, I got a voice mail from the lady I've been working with saying that Amy was ready to move forward with an offer, so please call her back. (which I thought, odd, because I still have another interview on the books - but yay!). I did, left a message. Then I missed her 2nd call and her voicemail says she mistakenly dialed my number and that call wasn't for me! OMG! What if I would have answered the phone the first time and she was going to present an offer for a role I didn't even apply for? Based on her voicemails, she was calling to offer someone the role of MANAGER, internal communications, who my boss's boss Amy is hiring. And I'm applying for SENIOR MANAGER, internal communications, with another hiring manager. Yes it's confusing but if you are in charge of hiring, you should probably make offers to the right people!

Update: Interview was great. We had a comfortable conversation and made a few interesting connections. Including that we're both introverts, which is one of the things I love about this company, that they see value in introverts, and introverts can be great leaders here (some companies heavily cater to a certain personality trait for leaders). When I was describing this part of me, he said "wow it's like you just described ME". And we chatted about college basketball at the end when he saw I graduated from Wichita State. Now I can breathe easy and wait for an offer. My guess is that it will come when I'm on vacation next week, Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday because that's how things work! 

Treadmill after work and before meeting up with the Bumble tri guy.