At the moment the days here seem to blur all together a bit. It’s really quite dull and I’d rather be in England.

Or perhaps not!

I started off with a splish splash paddle at the pier where the British contingent here on the big island is growing day by day. The place is really starting to ramp up in terms of busyness and the delightful sleepiness of the village is no more. The circus has arrived.

The expo area is being built up, the Ironman merchandise marquee in in place and being filled up with everything Ironman. The race is getting closer and I must not get stressed about it.

As if!

The swim area is looking as glorious as a tiny piece of sand surrounded by a concrete pier can look. I think there’s something special about this place and I never seem to tire of seeing photos of it.

Swim bags by the pier

Post swim (I barely swam at all, I just fancied getting my hair wet) a good sized group of us strolled over to the cafe we went to the other day and chilled with food and drink for a while. It was lovely and the view was spectacular.

Whilst out this morning I picked up a t-shirt courtesy of Freespeed bike fit studio in south-west London. They fitted me up on my bike a couple of years ago and have been giving away free t-shirts in Kona to GB folk for the past few years.

This years shirt describes me (and pretty much everyone else) fairly well I’d say….

So get this, we left home at about 6:50am and I swam for no more than 10 minutes. We didn’t get home until just before 11am! Island life is a good thing.

After a quick second breakfast I decided to get a run in. I quite enjoyed the run I did the other day along Ali’i Drive so thought I’d do the same again. When I say enjoyed I mean that the bits when I wasn’t dripping in sweat and gasping for a drink (which was the very warm thing sloshing about in my hand). The first 30 seconds of the one hour run!

Anyway, I set off. It was uneventful. I ran four miles. Turned around and ran back.

Now that we’re heading into race week Ali’i Drive turns into a strange place. Many a triathlete trains/runs on this piece of road. It’s a pretty nice road to run on as the scenery is decent in places and it does form the first few miles of the Ironman marathon. Many people run down here bare chested (apart from heart rate monitors) and often running just to look cool. The thing is, you need to psyche people out when on Ali’i as you’ll be racing them next weekend!

I found a quiet spot and practiced my ‘I’m gonna beat you’face!

On the return trip I saw Joe Skipper out training and looking very comfortable along with his bike escort. I hope he does well in his first outing to Kona next weekend.

When I got back I sat on a chair on the lanai and sweated. Ten minutes later I was still dripping. Twenty minutes later was more of the same. It’s fun this training lark I tell you.

What I needed after this intense effort was a nice cool beer.

Good job I’d booked us in at the Kona Brewing Company for a tour of their brewery and post tour tasting. Yes.

We strolled into town, did the tour which was pretty interesting. In summary:

• we saw lots of big silver silo type things
• we saw some pipes
• we saw lots of barrels of beer
• we drunk some samples of beer

After all of this exertion we sat down and had a late lunch/early dinner type meal. We over-ordered. Which wasn’t a bad thing as pizza for lunch on Saturday sounded ideal.

Whilst walking home we saw this interesting sign by the beach:

The last thing on the list of do’s and don’ts says ‘No Illegal Activity’. Er, isn’t that just a given?

Once we got home the sun was just setting so I scrambled to get the camera. I was a bit late so I’ll have to try again another day.

We jumped in the pool and by 7pm were both shattered, full of food and happy.

Then I made an attempt to catch up on the blog.