'Twas The Night Before Ironman...

Ok so it's almost time to play! Saturday afternoon just hanging in the room relaxing... Bike is checked, bags are packed, etc. interestingly the wind is ripping right now and there are white caps on the ocean... Too bad it won't likely be like this tomorrow morning! ;)

The pattern of the days here has gone something like this: cool mornings with no wind at all. Ocean is totally glassy and ~70 degrees. I anticipate no adversity in the swim tomorrow. Then wind starts picking up around mid-morning, so I'd guess we'll be encountering that 2nd loop of the bike.Wind  makes the run a lot cooler than it otherwise would be so the run shouldn't be blistering hot like it could be if it was calm. Really temps are not that hot but the sun is very strong and you feel it penetrating your skin. Light clouds help a lot! Overall the course is hillier than I anticipated. Even the run has some good little rollers. Nothing too daunting but relentless up/down with only a few flat areas. Overall I'd say my guess is that it is going to be a fair course that favors a strong athlete! I'm going to predict it will not be a smokin' fast course? But not ridiculously slow or excessively challenging either... I think it falls right in the middle as far as ironman courses go.

We've had fun so far... Yesterday morning Nalani and I swam with Hillary and Maik... That was fun (and confidence building!) and the seals we saw playing (so close to us!) were the icing on the cake! There is a lot of life in this ocean... We see whales breaching all over! I actually wanted to swim out by our hotel this morning bc I thought a whale encounter would make a cool story. Nalani disagreed so we went back to the swim course this morning and swam there- this time with Julie Dunkle. It was mellow and fun except for the fact that we all got stung! Not sure by what? There were these cool little neon blue sparkle things in the water below us (Magic blue sparkle! Watch out it might sting you!) so might have been that? I don't know. It wasn't that bad though. I think experience being in the ocean and getting stung and realizing you live through it might be a good thing here. My goal for the swim is to stay on Nalani's feet for as long as I can and see what happens. Rumor has it it's a running beach start so honestly I may never find her feet if its that kind of start (read: running beach starts are MASS CHAOS).

Looking forward to biking tomorrow. I've ridden a little bit the last few days but honestly it hasn't been great- the traffic is scarier than anything I've ridden in before and I've found myself feeling super timid which is odd for me. The course/road itself actually looks like it has the potential to be nice but the traffic doesnt let us experience that. Roads are closed on the course tomorrow so hopefully I'll put my big girl pants on and be brave! That's my goal for the bike. Be brave!

Not really sure what to expect on the run? 3x out/back but it appears there are 4x turn-arounds on each loop so that's a lot of 180degree turns!! I accidentally ran part of it today... Found T2 which is different from T1 which is different from the finish line. I'm guessing I'll be a little lost the first time around in the run but after that I'll have it figured out. :) As always in my world, the run is a bit of a crap shoot but my goal is to keep putting one foot in front of the other in an action that can technically be called "running" (vs walking!) and not over think anything. Just shut my brain off and run. That's all. (Sounds so easy, no??)

Anyway, that's it! Sorry no pictures... I'm posting from my iPad and too lazy to figure out how to post pics. But look on FB or Twitter bc lots of pics are being posted there by everyone and well, that's pretty much what it looks like here! Beautiful! This really does have the potential to be a top shelf race. I hope they pull it off in a way that does it justice!