It’s about time to settle in for the evening with a 3am wake-up call…my wife is in the first wave. The weather has been great and will actually be quite cool (mid 50s) until the sun breaks through, which was about 10am today. The high is only supposed to be about 82 tomorrow, perfect for racing. After spending $140 bucks on a new tubular for Tracy at NorCal Bike Sport, we headed to T1 for a pre-race swim. The water was cool but not cold. She feels good, so we’ll see what happens tomorrow. Spent some time at the expo today, a little smaller than last year but still adequate. Borrowed the shade under the tents in the Javelin booth with RD Dave L. and Max from Jav. It was my first opportunity to see a Barolo and Arcole up close, extremely nice.
The highlight so far was last night’s welcome event. I was a little late but caught quite a bit of Steve Larsen and his tips for race day. He offered some good insight, was well-spoken and entertaining. After that, it was the ‘main event’…Peter “The Comeback Kid” Reid and Tim “Boom-Boom” DeBoom. Dave (trifaster) did a great job MCing and asked great questions. Peter and Tim were awesome, answering everyone’s questions…even the one to Tim about pre-race sex. The guys were, as expected, down to earth, cordial, thoughtful, and extremely competitive. The both have one-track minds…Kona, Kona, Kona. They had their bikes there, as well. Peter is riding the same Specialized frame with a new red/black paint scheme, Zipp Z808 and disk, Profile’s new S-Bends…and damn is he low. Tim is riding what he called his “training” bike, the AL job seen from the wind tunnels pics with Hed 3-spoke, Bontrager disk, Bontrager bars and S-Bends. He’s still running a flipped forward seatpost. He mentioned again that he won’t be getting ‘Lance hand-me-downs’ anymore and that he’ll have something new for Hawaii. He stated that he didn’t make any changes as a result of the wind tunnel testing. He found a couple of things, but didn’t want to sacrifice the comfort. He will not be wearing an aero helmet in Hawaii, ‘it’s too hot and you risk overheating.’ Both were adamant that Normann will not ride away this year, both said they won’t let him get that far ahead. Peter mentioned he appreciated Normann’s style because it’s going to make IM racing hard again, no more sitting in and ‘resting’ on the bike. Intersting comments about Simon Lessing and Luke Bell…Big props to Russ, Dave and Tri-Dubai for setting this up with the guys, it was very cool. BTW, the ASICS booth was crankin’ ; )
