It wouldn’t be a Kona trip if I didn’t get sunburnt due to my own slap dash approach. I’ve stated my approach to use of sun cream on this blog before and today was one of those days where there was a definite risk of sunburn on certain areas of skin – namely back tops of my arms and shoulders. Realising this I applied sun cream to those areas BUT yet again I wasn’t rigourous enough. So I’ve got some pretty sore sunburn on my right shoulder after todays ride. No sun burn anywhere else. Makes my plan to get a decent tan ready for race day a little tricky as I need to somehow cover the burnt areas up whilst sunning the rest of me. This Ironman lark is complicated ;o)

Today started at 7am again for a swim. Well I woke a fair bit before that so had time to brew some coffee before meeting Roger, Rachel, Mel, Brett, Matt and Gary for a swim. Nice little group though we did get rather dispersed almost immediately. I’m really enjoying the swimming this year and had a solid swim out to halfway with Rachel where most of us regrouped. Back via the dolphin meet point but no sign of any dolphins (perhaps they didn’t get the memo). We went to the old favourite Splashers for breakfast. It’s such ashame their location isn’t as good as their food is fantastic. A far better breakfast than at Lava Java.

I had an hour to chill before we all headed out along the Queen K. Feeling perky again I went at a decent effort for most of the way out. Most had turned round by an hour but I wanted a longer ride and continued with Rachel almost to the end of the Queen K before turning round, in to the wind and in search of drink. We stopped at the Food Court in one of the resorts and downed a massive soda plus the 50c refill. Rachel then put me to the sword on the way back in to the wind. She’d paced far better than me and I started to suffer a bit. Still got back with 104km on the clock in just over 3 hours. I was pretty tired and had the, already mentioned, burnt shoulder. Tomorrow I’m planning a very relaxed day as this was a little more tiring than I’d planned.

Sticking to my sunning myself plan I headed out for 10 minutes each side. It was a lot hotter today so I planned to be careful. 10 minutes will allow me to assess whether I can handle more sun tomorrow.

We all headed to Bongo Bens for dinner. Great spot to see the sunset, which was a goodie tonight, and they do fantastic salads. I continued my relaxed approach by having a beer with my meal again.