Kona Diary - Days 31-33

It's Monday and it's officially race week!  With that in mind, I'll be blogging daily until race day.   I'm glad that the race is nearly upon us, as today has been teh first day that I've been really itching to get out and train hard!  Something akin to keeping a wild beast in it's cage, although in this case, substitute wild beast for a triathlete and cage for a condo!

Saturday was another chance to swim the race course, and it was a beautiful clear morning with the sun rising over the mountain.  I took the first quarter easy, then moved towards a race pace effort for the remainder.  Whilst briefly pausing at the turn around point, I started talking to another athlete there.  It actually turned out to be someone from my age-group who I raced against in Austria last year!  Only here could you bump into someone you know when you're 1.2 miles out in the middle of the ocean!  Before lunch I had a short bike-run session planned, before it got too hot later in the day.  After a solid 30 mile ride with 3x 10 minute intervals above race pace, I headed out for the run as quickly as possible to replicate transition.  It was only a 5 mile run, but again, one that included intervals above race pace, up to 10k pace.  Later that afternoon I caught up with British athlete and serial Kona qualifier Steven Lord.  It was nice to see a familiar face and share thoughts on race tactics.  The only scheduled session for Sunday was an 8 mile run in the morning along the Queen-K.  After that we went for breakfast at Bongo Ben's and took it easy for the rest of the day.

This morning (Monday) I headed to the pier to swim half of the course.  I arrived at around 7:30am and it was bustling!  It was the first really busy day at the pier - a sign that the majority of the athletes are now on the island.  Once the swim was done it was time for another key session ahead of race day - the leg wax!   Not my favourite part of the pre-race build up, but you can't be racing the Ironman World Championships with hairy gorilla legs!  This afternoon was spent lazing around, watching Troy which was nearly enough to induce an afternoon nap.

Registration opens tomorrow morning, so that will be the first thing to do after the swim.  Later in the afternoon is the Parade of Nations, after which the expo area will be opened.  Oh, and there's some some training to do as well.