Another delightful day in Paradise.

Most important order of business, I suppose:  I have my bike and helmet inspected, and stickered up to show that.  I’ve had my wetsuit dipped for Didymo.  Tomorrow is the official check-in day and Carbo dinner – and, no, I won’t be loading up on carbs 2 days before the race.  Not even the night before…you DON’T want my carb lecture here, so I’ll save that for another time.

Today was Expo day:

So much good stuff, so little money...

After looking at every tire, nutrition aid, running shoe, multi-tool, wetsuit, trisuit, swimsuit, tshirt, flipflops, sunscreen, vitamin, keychain, training video, and bike jersey, WITHOUT BUYING ANYTHING, I headed into town for a bit.  First a quick look at the lake…big mistake:

look closer.

It may not show up on the picture well, but those are whitecaps, tossing about all those buoys.  If the lake looks like this on race morning, I’ma freak my freak.  Do we need to revisit the Half-Iron experience?

I have stopped every day in a different coffee shop in the town of Taupo and had a cappucino.  They’ve all been delicious, and sitting outside watching the other competitors roll by is my favorite part of the day.

and it tasted as good as it looked

At the end of the day, we had a little 5k fun run, mostly locals, and the kids had a 1k run as well, so I got that little jog in to stay loose and relaxed.

Lovely day for a 5K

After both the Splash and Dash on Monday, and today’s Fun Run, this was the free food offering – not exactly typical athlete food, but maybe they do things differently here in the Southern Hemisphere:

those are sausages, or saussies, as the Kiwis call them

Finally, I have to share a picture here of Magellan (too many Magpies are named Maggie, and besides, he’s a boy).  Magellan wakes me gently every morning with a beautiful repetoire of bird songs and whistles, and he’s a right as rain.  We have developed a deep relationship – I speak to him at sunrise and thank him for his melodies…I will never forget what he sounds like.

I'll try to get a better picture of him before I leave - that's where he always perches when he sings

I can’t believe it’s already Wednesday night.  This week has both flown and crawled.  Thank you to everyone for your supportive comments – they just mean the world to me.  I’ve done enough of these races to know that when you are struggling, you cast about for anything you have heard that will help you go just one more kilometer.  Every one of your positive words do that for me, and I am so grateful for them.

Thanks for reading.