Lavaman – Day 3, part 1

Up at 5:45 today for a 6:45am team meeting.  These early mornings are tough, but race day we have to meet at 5:30am, so its good to slowly build it up to be ready for tomorrow.  We met outside of the lobby again and biked over to A-bay to do a little mini-triathlon and practice transitioning.  There’s actually a bunch of people o n the team who have never done a triathlon before, so some of these little things that are old hat for me are new to many.  We set-up a make-shift transition area, and then headed to the beach for another swim.  Two open water swims in two days – that could be a new record for me.  Once we throw in the third tomorrow I’ll definitely be done for the year.

Right after the swim started today a wave came I swallowed some saltwater through my nose – gross.  the taste was caught in my throat for what seemed like a long time, so it wasn’t a great start today.  But I eventually caught my breath and got some of it out, settled into a rhythm and kept going.  I made sure to hang closer to the buoy on the turn around today and avoided the big rocks I saw yesterday as I trudged into the beach.  Again I was in the middle of the pack, so that was good.  Next I toweled off quickly, slipped on my bike shoes and hit the road for a 15-minute ride.  Heading out was great – no swirly wind and a huge tail wind, so I easily cruised into a high gear and flew along the shoulder.  Then we had to turn around and wham!  The head wind on the way back was no fun.  We’ll see what we get on race day.

Back at the “transition area”, we dumped our bikes and went out on a lava trail for a short run.  Running on rocks is hard – my run time is not going to be good.  But thats cool – I’ll walk and enjoy the view

Once everyone was back in, we were on our own for awhile.  It wasn’t even 9:00am and we had already put in a full day.  Coming up we have packet pick-up and some meetings to attend, as well as a pasta party tonight.  In between we will of course be watching some hoops action – go Memphis!