Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Hanging out' with Bevan and John – 4 days to go

Tuesday 6th October

Swim at 7 was my best of the week, swam with Jilly and we decided to go for 15 out and 15 back, we got to the 3rd buoy in 11 mins, about 2 mins ahead of her best swim so far and she could feel it but we both felt good for it, we kept going for another 3 or 4 and then turned to head back.

Stopped off at the famous Coffees of Hawaii catermaran boat for a drink, seriously, the boat is moored 400m off the pier and serves hot coffee shots as you bob up and down chatting to people, classic. There is also a lovely looking girl on the beach at the pier with a sign (picture the 'GOLF SALE' type efforts in major cities) for coffee, pointing into the water lol.

Mum and Kelly had brought Teya down for the first time as well and thought the atmosphere was great. Lots of buff men to oggle, and a few not so nice, mmmm.

Registered after the swim at 9am, very slick, painless and another step closer to the race done.



At 2pm I went down for the arranged IM Talk ride with Bevan and John of podcast fame and anyone else who turned up, there was a few Epic Camp regulars, Steven ‘Madman’ Lord, Jo Carritt, to name a couple. It was decided to do 40 mins out and 40 back, bit of a fast paced tempo ride really with a few TT moments in there, we weren’t hanging about but it was nice to chat to Bevan and John when we got to ride side by side.

Back after the ride to cold Coffees of Hawaii with the Albernator and a stand around and chin wag with a few of their friends. Even arranged that if they are in the right place at the right time I might get interviewed on the run course, now that will be a challenge, run and talk in that heat mmmm,
IM Talk photo.
I even managed to get my photo taken.



Quick rush back to get changed for the Parade of Nations, basically a little like the start of the Olympic ceremony with all nations led out by cars and selected athletes, ours was Philip Graves in a typical British Car !!




Myself and Kelly joined the other Brit representatives for the parade in provided athlete shirts.




The parade went on for around 30 mins and ended up at the Expo, get the athletes to spend more money I say lol , myself and Tim Bishop were at the front for most of the way chatting about the race, I did make an effort to get the pirate name into the GB parade, check me out in the skull sarong lol.



Then onto the expo, very big, lots to check out, including this, a specially made TT bike by a Trek engineer for his 8 year old daughter, hand made one off !! very cool







The amountof IM porn was great, I purchased the 30 years of IM World Champs book by Bob Babbit, famous compere of the event, he signed it, then I found Natascha Badmann and Craig Alexander wandering around the Newton tent and got them to sign it as well, Kelly wasn’t as impressed as me obviously so just stood around taking pictures





So we left and enjoyed a nice sunset before heading back for dinner and checking on Teya being looked after by Nana





Til tomorrow …..

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