Thursday

This morning I woke up early again with butterflies in my tummy. It only happens in the morning and I am fine with that, as I know I won't have issues getting up at 4am come Saturday morning. At 7am I walked over to the hotel (Tui Oaks) where we have a breakfast buffet each morning, I watch in amazement as the guys down plate after plate and bowl after bowl of food! Since I have been here I noticed there aren't many women racers around and today I got confirmation of that. I have 6 girls in my age group and there are only 285 women racing and 1100 or so men! Anyways, after I had a pre-workout snack I hopped in the van with a couple other athletes and we had Ken Glah show us the run course. The course looks great, I am pretty excited about the run and I am sure that will change come race day, but there are just enough hills to break up the run, let me use some different muscles on the up hill and open it back up again on the down hill. If its windy like it is today for the bike it may be a LONG day and we are supposed to have a few showers throughout the race, but that will be fine as long as the sun isn't beating down. It takes 8 minutes in the sun here before you burn here and as you can imagine it heats up fast. After the run course preview I headed down to the lake with a friend to get a little swim in - which was lovely by the way :-)

We have been building our vocabulary since we got down here... Here are a few of my new sayings:
"Good on yah"
"No dramas"
"Pinch it" = steal

I have done so much since I have been here, each day I learn more from the people I am around and am having an overall great experience thus far! Everyone with Ken Glah's group is super supportive, the bike mechanics Dan and Matt (I think) are not only easy on the eyes, but do a great job. Frank and Ty (two Maori guys), Joe (Ken's brother), Stacy and I am sure I am missing some others have been wonderful - IF you ever have the opportunity to travel abroad for an ironman and are looking for an easy, affordable way to do so I would highly recommend using Endurance Sports Travel!!!

Ok.. time for some pictures :-)



These are all taken at the Expo and Registration area

Ken Glah in his speedo at the hot springs :-)


This is the bridge out of T2 they are building. We have to run over it to get onto the run course! Should be fun :-)