Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Soaking up the atmosphere ... 6 days to go

Sunday 4th October

Its early, left the others in bed, Teya got to sleep at 5am, Kelly on night duty, it will take a few days to change her pattern but she is still a gem so far, as long as she is fed every 4 hours when needed we are managing to get the night turned into day.

So the famous Ali’i Drive, Ali’i means Royal by the way. I left the apartment at 6.40am, people were running all up Ali’i drive, we are 6 miles from the Kona Pier.

You know when you have a picture of something in your head, I had expectations of this place being the Mecca that it is, everything is like I imagined, and better, it is amazing, people running, cycling, all shapes and sizes, all ages, I think I have got to race weight for this, well my GOD, its like watching a fashion show for the 'Do I look good naked' programme, lovely views, houses and condos lining the whole drive, years of IM history is here and you can smell and taste what it feels like just driving it. It was a moment for me that I will savour, 6 miles of IM heaven, sad some might think but for me it means I have arrived, and I think I was meant to come here, at least once.

The Kona pier is buzzing, Gatorade have the stand up, I met Mark, Liam – 2 Irish friends and Simon Ward a well known UK coach for our swim, Simon gave us the lowdown on the course and we set off. While swimming I decided for the first time ever to bilateral breath in an open water swim the whole way, all I wanted to do was keep looking down at the ocean bottom, fish everywhere, lava rocks, sea creatures, LOVE IT.

Another moment was had right there, I had met Mark 7 years ago at IM Switzerland, we arranged to meet to drive round the course, now here I was 7 years later with a now very good friend swimming in IM Mecca halfway round the world in our most important week, orsum lol !! Unfortunately the swell was so big that we got lost in the water cos the orange buoys kept disappearing so we ended up swimming the whole course when we were only going out for 40 mins, we got back to the pier over an 70 mins later lol !!

Coffee in Lava java and back to apartment to build bike.



Queen K highway is the main road for the bike course so we set off for a ride, out an hour and back an hour, we ended up doing 3 hours in total, about 57 miles, a couple of things to note, the wind we had on the way out won’t be up at the time we will be riding in the morning but we live in hope, on the way back its harder, wind against so must conserve energy. And when we stopped at the traffic lights on the way home you notice the heat hit you hard, its mainly coming from the tarmac so more of an issue for the run but riding into a hair dryer on full for 5+ hours means I will need to be drinking loads and pacing well.



I slept well this afternoon. I was woken up by the others coming home and thought it was the middle of the night, it was only 6pm, maybe the ride was a bit long. Dinner and bed.

Til tomorrow ......

3 comments:

g-sport said...

sounds like you're having your Christmasses every day:-) nice one mate enjoy it all
the G-sports

Fegan said...

No worries about you not enjoying yourself.

I think you've hit the nail on the head with the bike, with the few short hills in town and with the small tail wind on the way out it'll be easy to set off way to hard and die a horrible death coming back into a stronger headwind.

42 mile warm-up with a 70 mile solid effort is what's required!

Malcolm said...

Glad it's living up to expectations already. Say hello and good luck to Mark for me.