Aloha from the Big Island

Aloha!

It is now Tuesday night and we arrived here on Thursday morning and we are 4 days away from race day - eek!

So far we have done a bit of swimming, biking and running, seen a turtle, dolphins, fishies, mongooses (mongeese?), geckos and black and white cats, been up a 9000ft mountain to see the sunset, and sat on the beach.  So we are making the most of our time here.

Dig Me

Our new friends

We drove out to Waikoloa and rode out to Hawi and back which was a bit of an experience with some rather blowy sidewinds which eventually blew Jared off the road (in a controlled kind of way) so hopefully it is not that windy on race day... I can't remember it being as bad as that in 2009 so hopefully we got it on a bad day.

Made it to Hawi

We did a run in the Energy Lab and onto the Queen K to test out the heat and for me to test out the leggy and it all survived - wooo! 60 minutes of 8 min run/1 min walk and it was all good so bring on the 26x1 mile intervals on Saturday.
And I got a new pair of shoes so at least my feet will look good doing it and apparently my shoes are supporting prostate cancer so there you go.

Check out my furry tongue...

We had a bit of a mare on the Queen K this morning with Kezzle breaking a spoke and Jared and I both puncturing all within about 10mins of each other.  Lucky for the close proximity of the Kona Bikeworks store as well as the friendly Trek man who stopped to help me when the others had abandoned me.  Hopefully that is all our mechanicals out of the way now for race day.

We have been frequenting Walmart as our preferred grocery provider because the supermarkets are rather overpriced - $6.99 for a bag of muffin splits?! What the hell! We accidentally bought a $9 cauliflower as well - sadly we have discovered that it a lot cheaper to eat badly over here which is maybe the reason why many American's behinds are the size that they are.

There are a lot of fit and fast people everywhere you look here in Kona (apart from in Walmart) but I am sticking to my mantra of "I'm here to finish" and am surprisingly relaxed and am looking forward to the race.

Taddy relaxing by the sea

The next couple of days is race registration, a bit of a peruse around the expo, catching up with my dear friend Gaylord and my US friend Amanda and a bit of wallowing around in general

At 9000ft

Man up a mountain

Next update after the big dance!