Hapuna Beach

Day two wasn't nearly so fraught with disaster, which was great because now it was race prep time!  We checked in the day before and the atmosphere was awesome!  There was so much energy, and my butterflies were going like crazy as I was thinking about how I was supposed to perform well at this race.  We did our pre-race brick down at the venue.  As I was swimming in the waters of Hapuna Beach, a turtle came right up to me and swam besides me for a couple of strokes.  I had to stop and take in the moment because it is exactly what I had pictured when I thought of Hawaii 70.3.  Dream complete!  It really did look like this, just fewer swimmers!

We biked along the Queen K and I had my first taste of those famous Kona trade winds.  It was really good to practice getting tossed this way and that, because the wind is strong and completely unpredictable.  I just crossed my fingers that it wouldn't be really bad on race day.  The course was going to be pretty though.  There is a certain beauty to the black lava rocks and the spots of life trying to grow from them.  

After our workout we went and picked up the kids.  We knew that Cambrie would want a chance to swim with sea turtles too, and we needed to rack our bikes so it worked out well.  Jeremy and I had instructions to try to chill as much as possible.  I really liked relaxing on the beach.  It was really windy so sand kept getting blown in our faces, but I could deal with that.  

It was a bit overcast, which was great so we didn't feel so zapped on energy.  Poor McKenzie though, she was the one who fell victim to getting sunburned on the first day of vacation.  Luckily we found some aloe vera while we were digging out the van the day before so that helped a lot.  

We forgot the boogey boards, but the kids tried body surfing and loved that.  We had a lot of sand to clean out of their suits when they were done!  

Beach fun.  

After we had our fill of the waves, Jeremy and I had one more stop to make to drop off our run gear bags.  The finish line was going to be beautiful!  Look at the combination of coral and lava rocks on the shore!  

McKenzie came exploring with us and found herself a pretty yellow flower for her hair that night.  

Now it was getting real.  The race was the next day and our time for training was up!  How lucky are we that we were able to travel to such a gorgeous race venue!