Tuesday in Kona

Tuesday here in Hawaii. I woke up early and drove down to Kona (30 minutes from where I'm staying - I prefer to be out of the hub of IM chaos) to meet Mitch West at 6:45am to swim on the course again. From 7am on, the pier is packed with swimmers so I like to get in at 6:45 when hardly anyone is there yet. The plan was to swim out to the half way buoy, then stop at the floating coffee boat for an espresso on the return. Mitch tucked in behind me and we set out. The water felt great - swimming here is therapeutic for me. The visibilty is 100+ feet and it's quite amazing taking everything in as you swim. I got to the halfway buoy but Mitch wasn't there, so I floated and waited around for a bit. I figured he maybe turned earlier so I started to head back. As I began the return trip, a big object about 15 feet underneath me came up from behind and startled the shit out of me! I froze, sitting up in the water for second then sticking my head back under to get another glimpse. It was a dolphin playing around. I popped my head back up out of the water again to get a breath and noticed three dorsel fins just off to my left. Three more dolphins! The one underneath me came up and to within maybe six feet of me and then joined his friends. It was pretty amazing and I was looking around for another swimmer to take this in, but no one was near me. I guess they swam out towards the coffee boat because a few others spotted them as well. i cruised back in and rinsed quick. A mob was surrounding Craig Alexander who had just finished up his swim. Yesterday when I swam, Andreas Raelert was getting in the water at the same time. Both these guys are so slight and somewhat small - no wonder they run so fast.

I did a one hour ride out on the course later in the morning and the wind was blowing! I relaxed for pretty much the rest of the day. I'm going to lay very low between now and race day as I have caught a slight cold. My daughter was sick before I left. Combine that with standing on a soccer field on Saturday from 10:30am until 9pm in damp weather where the temperature dropped significantly, then flying for 11.5 hours the next day... The irony is the last time I was sick was going into St. Croix in May! I'm not going to sweat it though. I just need to rest.