Withdrawing from Columbia

I've never had to withdraw myself from a race, but found myself faced with a dilemma last night. While walking the puppies, Noah reminded me that his graduation was coming up and we might have family in town for that. When he told me which weekend that was going to be, the first thing I thought was "well that is not going to work to have people over because I have a race that Sunday and need to sleep...". Oops. Turns out his graduation is on the same day as Columbia. I plotted out possible schemes, one involved me showing up in my spandex in the nick of time to see Noah get his Law School diploma (what is it that they get anyway???). When it came down to it, I just could not make it work with out people stressing (me included), so I decided to withdraw last night (turns out that this was the deadline to get any amount of $ back). -It kind of sucks because even though I do not care for short distance races, I needed that race for the mental preparation. Currently the only triathlon I have prior to IMCDA is Lake Anna in a couple of weeks. Bahhhhh humbug.