KONA (Page 2)

Thanks for sharing the photos and your first days in Hawaii! Have fun enjoying the scenery at your own pace!

Day 3 - We decided to head over to the swim start and take a dip in and around the swim course.  Justin and I decided to swim the entire course.  The water was pretty choppy and the current took us all over the place.  We also met another racer who is from Chattanoooga and he swam it also.  Took me 1:47 to swim it.  Took the guy from TN 1:35 and he is a pretty decent swimmer.  Hopesully race day will be less shoppy and less current.  Who knows.  It is getting pretty crowded here and I ran into Normal Stadler at the Henn temporary tattoo shop.  He was very nice and not very big, probably why he is so fast.  The parade of nations was on day 4 (yesterday) and I got a pic of the front of the parade before we came through as the US athletes.  Pretty cool.  Athlete check in was yesterday - reminded me how international the event is..someone from France in front of me and a Japanese athlete behind.  We also saw Tim Deboom signing autographs.  See pic below.  Expo opened and my bike was also shipped out via Tri Bike Transport - picked it up yesterday.  Short run today and possible easy ride this afternoon.  Few pics below of the parade of nations, swim start area, our practice swim, etc.

VEIW FROM INSIDE THE USA PORTION OF PARADE OF NATIONS:

The race got off to a beautiful start this morning in Kona.  The pros started at 6:30am and then the age groupers started at 7am. 

The surf has been dead calm all week, but the day of the race looks like we have 1 to 2 foot rollers, for a more interesting swim.  The weather this morning is gorgeous and just in the low 70s.  Unfortunately they announced Chrissie was ill and will not be competing today.

The area around the swim start was wall to wall people along all of the seawalls.  I was about 1/4 mile from the swim start, but I think Brian got off to a good start...  I got some shakey video footage holding the camera over my head and will try to upload some of the short clips if I get a chance.

Brian will be wearing a GPS and you can follow his coordinates on the map at http://tinyurl.com/briankona in addition to reviewing the splits on Ironman.com.

North Atlanta Multisport members feel free to text me if you have any questions about the race.

Mahalo!

Justin


PS I took many, many, many photos but just realized that unlike the iMac at home my Lenovo laptop cannot open and edit the RAW files.  Will switch the photo mode on the camera and try to upload later....  At Bubba Gump Shrimp having an awesome buffet with a great view of the age determined groupers churning away out there.

Brian seems to be moving right along.

Congratulations, Ironman!

Thank you so much for all the support!  Words cannot describe how awesome this experience has been.  We just got into town after 15+ hours in airports and on plane.  Still a bit numb about it all but will do a race report soon.  Good swim, brutal bike and decent run.  Could not have done much more....tough, tough bike.  Incredible atomsphere.  Hurting today but certainly worth it.  Very, very appreciative of all of you that wished me good luck and followed the race.  Very humbled.  Thanks a bunch to Justin also who did a ton out in Kona. 

Mahalo!!!

Brian