This is all getting a bit repetitive…. I like it though. A lot. Wake up, coffee as the sun rises and a decision about the day ahead. Rather than go swimming today I decided to watch people swim instead, so we headed to the pier for a while. I took this opportunity to have a little go at a timelapse panoramic video of Dig Me Beach.
Todays pro sightings were Dan Hawksworth (Ironman UK winner who just arrived yesterday), Michelle Versterby (Denmark) and Jimmy Johnsen (Australia). I think it’s going to get really hard to spot the pros in a few days time as 1) I don’t recognise them most of the time anyway and 2) the beach is going to get really busy.
Walking back to the car park I bumped into Australian age grouper racer Jo Carman. She’s been here a few weeks and I read about her from a great little article she wrote for the witsup.com website a few days ago. When I say I bumped into, Sharon actually recognised her. Well… she didn’t even recognise her - Sharon just said something like “Oh, that’s probably that Australian girl and her mum who you told me about!” It was. We had a good little chat for a few minutes and we all agreed that we are indeed living the dream being here right now.
Over a leisurely breakfast at home the local radio station suddenly cut out - there were a few beeps and strange noises (kind of a bit like an old computer modem) and then an announcement about the regular monthly testing of the statewide siren and emergency alert systems would be at 11:45am. It seems that on the first working day of every month there is a test of the warning sirens in the event of hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunami, volcanic eruptions and more (announcement message - PDF).
Just before 11:45 we went outside to the waters edge to listen to the sirens. We couldn’t hear a thing! As we returned to our condo I could just heard the last few seconds of a siren in the distance. Hmn, I think I’ll stick to the radio announcements then in future (until the power runs out that is!).
Apart from that (which could have been interesting if we’d have heard the sirens and not the warning announcement on the radio) very little else happened today. I’ve got a long bike ride planned for tomorrow (Wednesday) so just took the bike for a spin into town, got my tires pumped up (there’s a couple of bike track pumps available in the Kona Banyan Court shops a minutes walk from the pier) and then rode the length of Ali’i Drive which is about 5.5 miles long and back home for lunch.
The afternoon was yet more doing very little apart from listening to the radio and reading one of the Hawaii guidebooks that we bought and thinking some more about things to do. We’re going to have to be quick as next week things will no doubt be crazy as we move into Ironman race week.
As tomorrow will be a long day (going out riding with another Brit who’s here) I settled for a big bowl of pasta for dinner. In fact, I practiced my pre-race dinner (although I’ll probably skip the beer the night before the ‘actual’ race).