Wednesday 30 September 2009

Kona diary - day 2



Day 2 29 sept

First taste of the Ocean this morning. It’s luuurvely. Very salty, but clear an warm. Swam out to the 3/4mile permanent buoy and back - was ale to swim alongside/just behind Russell which is nice for me as means no need for Steven to keep stopping and waiting …he went up ahead trying to stick with Rachel. There are pacuilar cold jets of water where freshwater streams flow into the bay, making the return a little chilly. For now its not too busy at the pier – that’ll quickly change!

Later we rode the whole bike course. Tough ride – we managed to get headwinds on the way out AND on the way back, with side winds as we rode up to Hawi. Think we were pretty lucky to have a chance to experience this – though I am sure it could be worse – it made it a pretty tough 100miles…and ensured we’d have no illusions about this being an easy race. Was also good to feel how the deeper section front wheel feels under the force of a strong side gust; alarming but controllable.

It’s damn hot, necessitating 3 stops for fluids along the way - the store at Kawaehae has a soda machine with ice dispenser so we were filling half gallon buckets with root beer and filling our bottles! I was leeching a lot of salt -0 much more than anyone else, which is unusual. Maybe I swallowed a lot of sea water this morning!

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