road to kona - heading out

I think it is going to snow here so time to get going. Packing everything up tonight and heading out in the morning with a final long ride. We are flying out of Spokane which is about 200km south of us. I am planning on riding for about three hours and if everything goes smooth the wife will pick me up along the way. This plan has huge potential to fail as she can be easily distracted and lose track of time. I won’t go into detail but fingers crossed anyway.

This is my second trip to Kona. I went to last year unsure of what to expect and really just excited about the experience. The whole scene there is wild, everyone looks fast and there is some serious attitude. I had never seen anyone wearing a heart rate monitor and speedo and not been totally joking before but low and behold… they were everywhere. This year I barrowed a speedo and threw in the hr strap and the first blog post from Hawaii is going to be a picture of a 6’5” 170 pound lanky white dude doing high-knee sprints on Alii Drive. Hold your breath.

Anyway, last year Trev had told me to expect a slow swim time. I usually do anyway so my swim expectation was low. I started near the front and after a very rough swim came out of the water feeling pretty good, looked at the watch for a 1:14ish time. Meh, not too bad. I was bike racked out on the end of the pier with all the people around my age group. I went through the change tent and was yelling up to the volunteer my race number so they could direct me to my bike. The guy kind of laughs as I come around the fence and says “it’s probably that one”, …. Friking only bike left! “Where is everyone?” … “Long gone bud”. Tough start, welcome to the big leagues. The rest of the day was great though. I had some trouble on the bike and then the run went well, but just being there was pretty cool.

This year, I am looking forward to the whole week and everything that this race is about but I am not going just for the experience. No excuses, I have had a good build up, no injuries, I want to race this race. I want to get out of the water with the main field, have a Speed Theory worthy bike split, and run the run like a runner. Go till you Blow.

Holding it down until the Speedo update…

Dallas