Kona Day 4

I took a short swim early, focusing on open water skills (sighting for race day, drafting, etc.) and planning my race day tactics. I saw a sea turtle about ¼ mile into the swim, and stopped and followed it for a while - pretty cool.

My mom got in last night and she met us at the condo after my swim for a trip down south, to the ‘Place of Refuge’ and the ‘Painted Church’. We were also going to pick up some Coffee for Rachel’s boyfriends parents, some “Donkey Balls”, and do some more snorkeling while we were down there (fyi - Donkey Balls are chocolate covered macadamia nuts - nothing to do with the wild Donkeys crossing over Queen K highway at dusk ; ).

After our excursion down south, Sena dropped me off to pick up my registration stuff. They checked my ID about 10 times before they gave me my race number and goodie bag. The goodie bag is half the reason I do these races. The hat they give you is definitely cool memorabilia, but the bag itself was a generic Ironman bag - nothing that said Hawaii or World Championship. Not as much cool stuff as I had hoped - I just hope my registration fee gets me some cold water on the course. I guess I'll need to go shopping.

After I got back to the room, we chilled in the pool for a bit, then I took my mom to the grocery store and ran into Ken Glah and his wife Jan (also my message therapist). She told me to come and see here the next day for a pre-race tune up message.

Later we checked out the “Parade of Nations” - we had some fun with it - cheering on the well represented Swiss and the one guy from Hungary alike.

Ken Glah had his own car in the parade and had some trouble throwing lollipops to us, saying this is why he does triathlons and not baseball ; ). Paula Newby Frasier and Natasha Badmann each had their own cars at different points in the parade.

Later in the evening we picked up my eldest daughter Erika at the airport (yeah!). She was fully of energy as always and I could hardly believe she had just flown in from South Carolina.