Well the wait is almost over and in twelve hours time I'll be in the water and ready to start Ironman Hawaii. This morning I went for my early morning swim at about 7am. The pier was so busy and I can't imagine what it's going to look like tomorrow morning with everybody there.I really struggled to find a swim rhythm with everybody swimming in any direction. Hopefully it will be somewhat better tomorrow with everyone swimming in the same direction.
I swam out to the boat that is about 300 meters from shore where they serve coffee in the ocean. It was an experience floating in the water and drinking coffee before I head back to the shore.
After the swim I did my 15 minutes bike followed by 15 minutes run. Before 9 am I was done and rested the whole day, or sort of.
I checked and double checked my transition bags. My plan was to go and rack my bike at 4pm as you have till 5h30pm to do it, but at 3h30 I could not wait any longer and headed to transition to rack Matilda.
Walking towards bike check inn.
The check inn was so well organized and every athlete gets a volunteer assigned to you and they personally take you to your bike spot, walk you through the transition and show you where to go. Then they take you to place you transition bags on the racks.
A Marshall checking the bike.
I am so lucky with both my bike and run bag as my hook where my bag hang from is right at the beginning of the stand.
My bags left bottom right in front.
The calm before the storm this afternoon.
Transition bags laid out before packing them and my race kit for tomorrow. Check out the cool Tri top from Mark Allen.
I'll be the only Mark Allen athlete who will be in Red, Yellow and Black, all the others will be in the customary Blue and White. Somehow the company responsible for the outfits saw a request from me that I want it in yellow.
Don't know who's request it was but it wasn't mine. At least I will be spotted easier by Kim from the other MA athletes.
This is what I will look at for at least 5 hours tomorrow when I am not looking at the Lava fields. My Power meter and the pictures of my loved ones, Kim, Dejone my sister Heloise and on the other side my late father Christo, my mother Stoffie and my late mother in law Susan.
I've had their pics on the bars for the last two Ironmans and it is really helping me if I am struggling during the bike, just looking at them motivates me and I also talk to them. Sometimes I think people than I pass on the bike think I'm going nuts, have sun stroke or are dehydrated if they see me talking all by myself.
Check out this cool identification sticker you need to fit it to your bike for id purposes.
And the Bike frame number, with the word "World Championship" a real motivator.
Well now for my traditional Pre race Dinner meal, some Spaghetti Bolognaise with a glass of red wine and then going to bed.
Can't wait for tomorrow to go out and have some fun. As Mark Allen said yesterday morning, an Ironman is not that tough, making it tough is trying to do a 3.8km swim, 180km bike and 42.2 run in less than 17 hours. That's what makes it tough.
Oh almost forgot, for those who wonder why you see very little tweets and pictures on twitter from me since yesterday well I got a wake up call the night before last from my cell phone provider.
It was literally a wake up call as it was at 2am and also a "wake up" call. The lady gave me a friendly reminder of what the roaming rates are and also gave me my balance for the last two weeks of international tweets. Luckily they saw that this account is going through the roof so they called. SHOCKER, will now tweet via the net and only tomorrow via my Blackberry.
Dejone my daughter will keep you posted via twitter, so if the tweets don't make sense or the spelling is incorrect sorry for that, but at least you'll have updates before you get them on www.ironman.com
But you are welcome to follow my progress live on www.ironman.com just type in my surname or race number, I'm number 1192.
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