Epic NZ, Jan 10th

OK, I am a little shelled right now so Dave's story will have to wait a bit.

Quote of the day to Wim and Mitch...

Wim: I wonder what it is going to be like when you guys decide to ride hard?

Mitch: If I wanted to ride easy then I would have stayed at home.

Tomorrow is dedicated to John Newsom. The first mega-ride that I ever did was with Johno. We rode from Christchurch to Nelson in two days -- 500+K.

One of my first bonks ever -- a really serious one where I nearly chundered happened about 30K into the ride tomorrow (that was about 180K into the ride that day). At that stage, Johno was feeling far to chipper and offered me some wine gums -- didn't go down so well. For the rest of the ride... "want some wine gums? each time we swapped out". Suppose you had to be there. Johno thought it was hilarious -- I was less sure.

Anyhow, it was rides like that that helped me really improve my cycling performance and learn to cope with the fatigue and emotional valleys that we fact in IM racing.

The guys did great today. Absolutely massive day on Monday then another solid outing with 3K swim; 140K ride; and 50 min run. Some of the lads tacked on to the ride and a few even swam 6K -- took them more than 2 hours!

Pretty tired -- I did better today and didn't hit the wall.

Tomorrow is a tough 180K on the bike -- a number of us are going to swim/run before. A good idea because we aren't going to feel like a run when we arrive.

OK -- more later.