Great day thus far

"It doesn't get much better than this!" That's what I said to John as we floated in the pacific at Hapuna Beach, one of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

After breakfast, we loaded our bikes into the SUV john rented and drove up to Hapuna. This is approximately the 35 mile mark of the bike course on the Queen K highway. We were meeting John W. and Oakes there to ride up towards the turnaround in Hawi and back.

The ride towards Hawi rolls mostly uphill, with mountain views to the right and ocean views to the left. Usually, there's a pretty good headwind heading north here, but today, there was a light tailwind. The sun was quite strong today, but it didn't feel too hot out. Very humid though. My legs felt good. Not great yet, but that's expected after only arriving a day and a half ago.

This part of the island took a bit more abuse from the earthquake. part of the road was closed to cars for repair. There were lots of huge stones and pieces of lava rock littering the sides of the road, and there were also some fissure cracks running across the asphalt. Nothing that would affect the course for Saturday though.

We road easy for a bit over two hours and regrouped at the parking area in Hapuna, and headed down for a dip. John W. and Oakes blew out pretty quick. I think they wanted to get to registration today which closed at 2pm. I usually wait a day or two to avoid the crowds and long lines. John B. and I took a dip, did some body surfing in the big waves, then stopped off at Waikoloa for some great Ono sandwiches for lunch.

Right now, we are sitting outside of Jamba juice. Chris McCormick, one of the race favorites is sitting at the table next to ours. I was talking with him about his kids. He has his brand new baby with him, she's 6 weeks old! He said he feels somewhat good, although you never know on race day, but he's ready to roll. I said that it's easy to overanalyze every little thing this week and you can't really put much weight into anything until race day, to which he replied "exactly".

I am going to do an easy 30 minute run before dinner, and then we are headed to the Kona Brew House for brick oven pizza and maybe a cold one or two.

All in all, just a great day!