This morning I was up nice and early to meet Roger and test my new Oomph race suit. I certainly like the look and feel of the suit. I did a pretty swift swim out to the halfway buoy and back. Got out in under 15 minutes, chatted for abit and then came back via the permanent 1/2 mile buoy for a slightly longer route back. The suit feels very comfortable on but there is some rubbing. I think thats par for the course with any suit and especially when swimming in salt (very) water. The rubbing was nothing compared to last year and considering I was out 40 minutes without an vaseline it was really not too bad.

The town is now heaving first thing on a morning but we managed to get a window seat in Tantes for a truly leisurely breakfast. It’s one of the great things about this period close to the race – no one has much to rush off for so everything is slow and laid back. It gave us a great view for the Underpants Run. This year must have had 4 or 5 times the number of people in it over previous years. I never go along with it thinking on of the cool things is it’s the small little event. This year with so many it lost something for me becoming a mass participation thing. It still was funny.

I spent the morning sorting my bike out with it’s race numbers and race tyres before heading out along the Queen K to test it out and to test out the tri suit for riding in. I was undecided about what shorts to wear on the run. The Oomph shorts look cool but I would really have to wear them under the tri suit as they’d be fiddly to get on in T2. I tried riding with them on under the tri suit and though initially it felt tight by the end of 40 minutes I thought it was quite comfy. I then did a 20 minute run and more or less decided I will run in running shorts. I feel tri shorts are just a little too hot in this climate and since I will be changing out of the one piece anyway I may as well go the whole hog and race in what I normally run in. This does mean I will probably run in these old orange run shorts (don’t tell Jo as she thinks they’re horrible) but I know they’re super light and don’t rub so it’s the sensible choice.

Last night we went over to Scotts for a viewing of the “Going Long Going Hard” DVD. It was really fun watching it with a load of the people that were on the trip. It was  great way to remember the trip and there were lots of laughs to certain parts of it. It was ashame they had to limit it to 48 minutes as it really didn’t get in to some of the extreme stuff we did and the racing that went on. Having said that I’m sure it’s only those that were on the trip that would like more – for everyone else I think the length is probably perfect to get a feel for what went on. I will be interested to see what friends think when they get to see it.

I have been getting an awful lot of worried looks and comments from people when they hear I’m going to run in my Vibrams. It’s almost making me doubt my plans. Tri247 rather let the cat out of the bag by commenting I may be the first to do Kona in them, I hope I am and that their comment doesn’t prompt someone else that was umming and ahing to go for it this Saturday. I find it interesting how convinced people are that it is unwise given they’ve never even worn these shoes let alone run in them. To me it’s how good the marketing of the running shoe industry is that intelligent people don’t even question that our feet were designed to run in shoes …. surely we’d have integrate shoes if that was the case. As far as I’m concerned my run performance on Saturday will be far more about my preparation and training than about my shoes though i reckon there will be many that will blame any bad performance on my footwear.  That said I don’t really want my competition in on the secret so if they could continue to believe in K-Swiss, Newton, Nike etc… that would be good.