If you are ever struggling with motivation to train (or exercise) in late September/early October, head over to Kona, Hawaii as you will find yourself with endless motivation and energy. For ten days, I get to be a "spectator athlete." This means I get the fun part of training on the course without the pressure or the stress. As I write this, it's officially race week and the island is getting busier and busier with athletes. Even as I write this at 6:30pm (and the sun has set), I see so many people out walking (and running) on Ali'i drive. By 7am, athletes are swimming the ocean. The Queen K gets busy with athletes riding and running by 8am. There are cyclists and runners everywhere. Although it's "only" 78-80 degrees here (everyday) it feels incredibly hot and humid. It's the perfect weather for training as there's never a bad day to be outside. I purposely did not take an off-season in September as I wanted to maintain a good level of fitn...
We started the long trip to the big island on Wednesday evening. We left our house around 5pm, picked up Chipotle and drove ~2:20 hr to Decatur Georgia to stay with our friend/athlete Katie at her house. With a 7:30am flight out of ATL, we opted to be close to the airport versus driving from Greenville to Atlanta at 2am on Thursday. It was nice to catch up with Katie (we haven't seen her since her 3rd place finish at IM Maryland) and finally meet her doggies. She knows how much I love her three-legged dog Pax and I finally got to meet the fluffy marshmallow. On Thursday morning, we woke up around 3:50am and drove the 20 minutes to Peachy Parking and then took the shuttle to the domestic terminal. Although we could have flown from Greenville (Delta), it was cheaper and less layovers to fly from ATL. After checking in and dropping off our bikes and suitcases, we went through security and spent ~90 minutes in the Delta lounge in terminal A. We enjoyed some coffee and food before boar...