All Settled in Kona - D-7...!

So we (the family and my parents) arrived at the Kona Coast Resort shortly after midnight and checked into our two bedroom villa. We had driven down to Edmonton yesterday morning/afternoon, taken WestJet from Edmonton to Vancouver where we met up with my parents. We then travelled together from Vancouver to Kailua-Kona on WestJet. The plan is to be in Kona for two weeks this year so that we have some down time as a family after the race. I’ll do my best to post a daily blog like last year through to race day.

The ladies and kids enjoying dinner in Vancouver airport.

This morning everyone woke-up remarkably early considering that most hadn’t snoozed much on the airplane. I guess that’s expected considered we moved a few more time zones (4 for us, and 6 for my parents) west. All things considered everyone was in a good mood this morning. We took the opportunity to go out for breakfast and we elected to try out Bongo Ben’s Island Café (on Ali’i Drive facing out towards the swim start).  The service was good and the food was great. Everyone enjoyed their breakfast and we also managed to watch part of the Ho’Ala Swim – this year they had the swim course setup on the Saturday before and people could race the swim course as a practice. I had contemplated signing up but given the fact we were getting in so late I decided against it. 

The Maley clan enjoying breakfast at Bongo Ben's Island Cafe.

The rest of the morning we went grocery shopping to stock the pantry and then I managed to sneak in a 50min shake-out run before lunch. It was both hot and humid. What was supposed to be a shake-out run turned into a 12km Ironman race pace run. Clearly, the legs were fired up and ready to run and the effort felt easy. 

After lunch, I managed to catch-up on some sleep. I closed off the afternoon with a light shake-out swim. My swimming has been non-existent in the last few weeks as the pool in Cold Lake is closed and the lake is a bit too chilly at this time of the year. Despite my lack of swimming, the shake-out felt good though the water was choppy and I had to fight a strong current heading back into shore. The swim in the 5-10ft water was very scenic as most of the area was reef. It brought back lots of memories of snorkelling on Papua New Guinea as a kid growing up.

Klara and James enjoyed the water while I swam.