Aloha! It’s a beautiful day in Kona….

Mitch Anderson

It’s funny how nothing much at all changes in Kona…but your purpose for being in Hawaii can modulate the way you see the place.  I remember getting off the small (and slightly frightening) Hawaiian airlines flight from Honolulu in 2000 and being hit by a wall of heat and humidity. My internal monologue went along the lines of “Holy beep, this is going to be a beeping hard place to race!” Towering volcano Mauna Loa and all the black lava fields were truly terrifying.

But I arrived here for my seventh visit yesterday (Sunday lunchtime) not having been here for two years, and it seems very different. For starters, I had trouble negotiating the aero-stairs with the cam-walker boot I’m wearing, courtesy of an operation I had Thursday afternoon. A troublesome achilles capsule required some trimming by kindly Dr Schneider. I thought I could make it through a career without surgery, but 20 Ironman races to one operation is a pretty good ratio for an elite athlete. I hope I can make it through the next twenty before I visit the Avenue Hospital again. Maybe that will be for a vasectomy though!!!

So I wasn’t worried by the conditions as I stepped out. Indeed it’s quite mild here in Kona for race week (26-28 C) with light winds. So with no fear factor, I’m looking at the course in a new light. The rolling surf and sea turtles could be savoured as I plunged into the warm waters. Scratch that, hobbled awkwardly into the turqoise waters at White Sands Beach. Seemingly the same locals as every other time bobbed their heads to the same rasta beats, with sub-woofers turned up to eleven. They look and snigger at the lean, lily-white bodies clad only in budgie-smugglers as we head for the water. They sip from luke-warm cans of bud, fast tracking to type2 diabetes, which is plaguing the indigenous population. Those in the water happily whoop and yell as a small swell rolls in, with eskie-lid riders (body boarders) contort their bodies as they’re dumped in the shore-break. Sand in every crevice is the gauranteed result.

So after a splash we retire to our beach shack across the road for tea, where the tweeter sound is diminished but we can still feel the bass of  parked monster trucks. It’s humid and still, and smatterings of athletes trot past in race gear or zing by on humming race wheels. More is less in race week, but most can’t heed that motto. I’ll keep you in the loop and answer some questions later today…

Mahalo,

Mitch