My body has pulled up pretty well since the race. The only concern are my feet which are covered in blisters and are pretty painful - although not painful enough to stop me from kicking the footy. This will be my last IM race in Asics runners, they chop my feet up badly, so the quest for finding a new type of running flat starts ! I think the Newtons may be the shot, or maybe these ones from K Swiss - Very me!
I'll add a heap of stuff I've written down over the past few days and list them in point form below.- Endura Afterparty was awesome, we started at 12:30pm and didn't pull up stumps until 10:30pm. We were with Tony from Endura who is a fantastic fella and spent a lot of time picking his brains on nutritional stuff. Bloody big hangover as well !
- We missed the IM awards night which as it turned out was a good thing because the whole show went pear shaped when it bucketted down rain for 3 hrs !!
- 'Team Lewis' all survived race day really well. Dehydration & sunburn took its toll on a lot of spectators as well as athletes. The junior members of the team are below!
Left to right - Rochelle, me, Tilly, Meggie & Tommy. - The kids were stars on the day in their own right. As you can see by the team issue they are very patriotic and were getting their pictures taken by Triathlon mags, newspapers and supporters all day.
- All my race gear worked perfectly, no hiccups from any quarter with all sponsors and WSTC getting great coverage as you can see below.
- I checked my bike in at the same time as Chrissie Wellington. As previously mentioned she is 'the chick!' again taking time out to have a yarn and a laugh at what is usually quite a stressful time for a lot of athletes.
- The little bit of sunburn I got during the race is bloody painful ! I took time out on the bike and run to put sunscreen on because of the blistering sun, although there were some parts I couldn't quite reach as I was pedalling at 35km/h. OUCH !!
- The bike and equipment count pre race is awesome. As you check your bike in you have various bike & component manufacturers, web site editors, bike and tri mag dudes all having a squizz at your bike and all the bits on it as they all take official tallies of everything that goes into transition.
- The presidential race even had an effect on the race! Obama had a manned booth set up on race day handing out policy information, t-shirts etc. What they look to be targeting is the people who don't turn up to vote and work hard on persuading them that they (and Obama) will make a huge difference.
- Ambush marketing is alive and well in the lead up to race week. Even though Gatorade and Powerbar are the nutritional race sponsors, other companies such as Gu, Beastie Milche, Cytomax, Clif Bars etc. pop up throughout race week and flood areas with sample products & merchandise. Bloody fantastic I reckon...
- Tom and I have been flat out snorkelling over the last couple of days. Tom bought an underwater camera to take some photos of all the tropical fish so fingers x'ed they all turn out good. We even had a run in with a giant turtle who wandered over to check us out as we were floating about.
- It's amazing what the Ironman race ID wristband does - It elevates you to celebrity status! A lot of people stop you and ask you how the day went, people in shops ask you to sign posters and merchandise, the greatest buzz has been signing the huge race poster in the West Hawaii running club store that will be up on the wall along with 30 other posters from every year!
I must hit the sack, it's 1:30am local time and we leave for Honolulu in 13 hrs, I haven't even packed my bike yet. I'll do a quick update from Waikiki then will probably see you all over the next couple of weeks.
Mahalo, Matty
No comments:
Post a Comment