Originally written in German. Translated to English by AI — please excuse any awkward phrasing.
After yesterday’s rest day (= watching fish at the pier for a bit), today’s last longer session was on the schedule.
At 7am we headed out together with the rest of the crew toward Hawi — bikes loaded into trucks, athletes loaded into yellow school buses. Those were unbelievably cramped with zero legroom — even flying budget airline economy class feels like luxury by comparison. Oh well, it was only 1.5 hours. Once in Hawi everything was unloaded and we rode back to Kailua-Kona on the bikes. The first few kilometers were more about “how do I stay on the bike at all” — it felt unbelievably windy to me — but more experienced Hawaii athletes and even the bus drivers were of the opinion that it was calm 🙁 You can only hope it’ll be that way on race day too.
The ride was generally very much defined by wind, heat, isolation and plenty of flat tires. Heat from below and above, wind unpredictably coming from all sides. And about 10 flat tires that I personally witnessed over the 85km stretch.
Halfway through there was an aid station where we stocked up on water, sports drink, bars, bananas (and two Erdinger non-alcoholic beers), then continued at a solid pace.
Once home, cycling gear was swapped for running gear for a short brick run. It was “only” 32°C, but my feet and toes hurt so much from the heat of the asphalt… no idea how that’s going to play out when it gets really warm.
Here are a few more impressions:
