It’s all kicking off now. This evening was The Parade Of Nations. This is a nice little event. Very informal, not too long a parade and the locals seem to love it. I really feel athletes should make every effort to come along. We take over this little town and we should show respect by attending this parade. The GB lot looked pretty good in their nice t-shirts supplied by Ironman UK – unfortunately despite my replying early with my size (medium) they kindly gave me large which is like a tent on me. As usual Jo got small which I assume is the smallest they did and like mine is a tent on her. So she ends up without a wearable t-shirt and I ended up with hers which fits me perfectly. Considering I’m 6’2” the sizing seems rather insane if I’m in the smallest T-shirt produced. This seems to happen at every race. I wear Jo’s t-shirt – do race organisers not look at the athletes and realise generally triathletes aren’t huge. Sorry … didn’t mean to gripe.

Really enjoyed the Parade. Had a natter with Rachel and finally hooked up with Gaelle and Richard. It was so nice chatting with them over dinner.

My day started with a fun swim with Roger. He wanted to do half course and try to stick on my feet. I was looking for a gentle swim so this was perfect. I wore a rash vest, I claimed, to give a bit of drag to slow me down but later came clean that it was to cover my sunburn which I’m slightly embarrassed about. Roger did great for 5 minutes as I wasn’t going easy. He then faded and I had to ease up, he clearly worked hard to the turn buoy. I enjoyed helping him out and pointed out that the pace he held for the first 5 minutes was good so it seems clear he could get improvements by working on his endurance at that pace. On the way back we headed to the Coffees of Hawaii boat … it’s kind of a classic Kona moment now. We followed this with a seriously chilled breakfast. As this week progresses the hanging out becomes longer as we all have less and less to do. It’s such fun.

I did my final gym session following Scott’s advice

to maintain my leg gym work into the final week because of my lack of running. This is new to me so felt a little bizarre heading to “The Club” a really nice gym just a block from our hotel. Scott had said to do lower weights but get a burn. I think I now understand this. I dropped the weight by about 25% but was surprised at how big a burn I got. I can only assume it’s because my legs are in recovery mode.

In the afternoon I headed to the IM Talk / Epic Camp ride. It was typical Epic Camp. Though stated as steady it was pretty full on. Jo, sensibly, dropped off and did her easy ride. I soon realised it wasn’t going to be sociable so did what I would have on my own – steady out for 40 minutes then some full on efforts on the way back. We then had iced coffee, courtesy of Coffees Of Hawaii after. Finally a chance to chat and meet some of the guys we’ll be sharing end to end Epic Camp with. I didn’t feel great on this ride till after the first 20 minutes or so but after that I really felt quite good !