Wow, another major day and a bit of a historic day for Fiona as I. But, I’ll get to that later.

It was a 5:40AM wakeup for a 6am departure with Karen and our bikes. We had a team swim at the swim start and included 3x100m at race pace. There were plenty of beautiful fish out there off Dig Me Beach today and many more swimmers. We luckily found parking for our adventures. Then, we were off down the Queen K, trying to get past the airport but we made it to the Energy Lab with all the traffic and parked at the top. We put our bikes together and then headed North past all the traffic. We included a bunch of recovery work and 3x90seconds at race pace. If felt better than the last 2 days but I was long past the girls having done an effort down one of the hills hitting 60kph again. I turned around, another effort, and caught up to the ladies. Fiona said Danyela Ryf (last years winner) had just past her! I didn’t see her; she must have been ahead of me when I turned.

We headed back to the hotel and then quickly were out the door back down the Kaukini Highway to a good parking area I found. We were a few minutes late to the Team Australia breakfast but heard and saw from Pete Murray (the voice of Ironman Asia-Pacific) and Turia Pitt and Coach Robbo. We had some nice muffins and papaya and bananas. Then we hit up a bunch of shops and the expo. We bought some nice shirts and souvenir’s. and saw some turtle heads in front of the Kona Inn. For lunch I took Fiona to the Outback Steakhouse and we had some salad with salmon and coconut shrimp. It’s been a long time since I’ve had salmon so it tasted quite yummy.

We stopped at Lava Java and had some cookies and Yerba Mate for me and Fiona’s first Kona Coffee. At the expo we hit by the Hot Shot booth and chatted with 3x IM World Champion Craig Alexander. We saw Karen Smyers there again. I then wanted to meet up with Jim Vance who is the author of multiple books I’ve read. He was then there with a panel including Craig Alexander who were talking about running with power. I don’t really buy into that yet; I need to run more and consistently and with more quality to even want to take running to a more complicated and analytical level! But Bob Babbit was there as well. We also saw Caroline Steffen at the expo. All the pro’s were out today! It was awesome.

We hit up the store quick then back to the condo for a 2 min shower, out the door to the Kona Royal Hotel where Mom and Tony are staying. We joined with Jacinta and Mum and went to the Luau. Lots of dancing, singing, fire dancers, a large buffet, more pig, and Mai Tais’. I did indulge in 2 Mai Tais’ and more meat but that will be the end of that till after the race. No more meat, fish, eggs, milk. And carbo-loading starts tomorrow!

So yesterday I said there was going to be a special purchase. Well, for the last writing of this blog I’ve been writing in our brand new Normatec Boots! I knew I wanted these $1,600 massage/recovery boots for sometime now and figured I’d grab them on a deal here. Well, I got a demo version with $200 off. We got 2 tshirts as well. The total with a carry case was $1,545 and I’m looking at this as the next best investment compared with our powermeters.

Race Day is near!