Day Two

I'm still a bit tired from the trip. But, I'm not too worried about it since I arrived a day earlier than last year....so I feel like I'm one step ahead of the game. As always, I was up at 5am on the dot. Yesterday was our first venture into town. Jenn and I met up with Chris Ramsey (of Team Psycho) and hit Lava Java for some...well...java! After we checked out the swim venue. Lots of people watching here....although I didn't really see any famous faces in the crowd here. We did a nice 30 minute swim. Sometimes while I'm swimming I think that I'm the only one who "looks up" for other swimmers. The whole swim is like an "almost" head on incident. But, I came out unscathed. Following the swim, we hit the ART (Active Release Therapy) Tent for some body work. I've been struggling with some nagging injuries lately. For me, it's not about "if" I'm injured, but how injured. I always have some sort of pain. Right now, it's my rear rib (pain from an old broken rib) and my left ankle heel. The later is more concerning. I must have turned my ankle on a trail run a few weeks ago and done some ligament damage. It wasn't too bad, until recently....it's been getting worse. I've been icing it. Hopefully it won't get any worse than it is....it can be pretty painful.

After picking up my bike from the QT2 house (thanks Brian!), Chris and I headed out for a 90 minute ride along Alii Drive and the Queen K Highway. Along the way, we visited with Vinu Malik of Fuelbelt. Man, he's staying in a sweet pad about 3 miles into the run course along Alii. The winds were howling along the QK. There's already buzzing around town about what the winds are going to do on Saturday. Honestly, I don't want to hear it. It is what it is.

Jenn and I went for a short walk through town later in the afternoon, while Chris went food shopping. While in town, we stopped in a store along Alii that had a 2009 World Championship Poster for athletes to sign....same as last year. After much searching, I found the place that I signed last year.

Chris has kind of become part of our travel party, since his wife and son don't get in until Thursday. It's cool...and nice to have someone to do my workouts with. He also came over for dinner last night. We grilled out in the condo courtyard and sat of the lanai overlooking the water, drinking Kona beer. Not too bad! Here's some pics from the sunset last night taken from the lanai.

All for now. The "Coffees of Hawaii" floating expresso bar is being set up today, so I'll post some pics of that later, as well as our venture out to Hawi (turnaround point on the bike).

Lastly, I'll leave you with two thoughts...both very different:

1. My thoughts and prayers go out to Carolyn and Lauren Cullings (freinds and teamates) who lost their mother to cancer. I can't (and don't want to) imagine having to deal with the loss of a parent.

2. My thoughts and congratulations go out to Pat Wheeler and Courtney Renauld who tied the knot here on the Big Island yesterday.

-P