The best thing to do early in the morning during Ironman week is to head out to Ali'i drive for a morning run. It's hilarious! There are crazy athletes everywhere and they are running insane paces with very little clothing on. We fit right in...except for the insane pace. What we lacked in pace we made up for in nudity. We saw famous people, we say someone who has won the Big Dance 6 times, with his son, who I believe is racing this year. That must be surreal for him! After the jog, and some food we headed to the swim start to meet up with Karlyn for an open water swim clinic focused on the Ironman swim course. There were just three of us in the clinic which meant awesome one on one (or one on three I guess) personal attention. We learned so much and now I think PIC and I feel really solid about where we are starting, how we are starting, and we have some great tips and tricks to make things easier.

If you are in the Denver area, Karlyn is teaching a swim form clinic Oct 28 or 29th in Highlands Ranch. It's a cool opportunity to learn from someone who currently holds 47 FINA Masters World and over 95 United States Masters National records. wow!

After the clinic PIC and I headed over to registration to get our goodies. This is always a really exciting time because it's when the Ironman people bestow on you the famous "wristband." It's how all of us tri-aliens know the other people who are from our planet. I kid. Honestly, it's just that level of "wow, I made it, I'm racing" that they tie to your wrist.

The volunteers at registration were great, just the nicest folks from all over the world. So awesome! It was really neat to go through it all with Michelle. It was fun to see her get excited and giddy. A lot of hard work went into getting here and you can see it in so many peoples eyes.

On our way home PIC and I just decided on a whim to hit up this Acai Bar. OMG, we both agreed that even though we had THE BEST DAY, the Acai bowl pretty much took the cake. This place was amazing and I am officially making these at home.

After the bowl we had Michelle Simmons over for lunch which was great. She is superb company and we ate like starving triathletes. It was nice to talk about race plans, and just generally geek out about triathlon.

Once Michelle left it was time for us to go pick up our wheels from Race Day Wheels. Marc hooked us up big time and now the bikes are sporting fancy sets of Zipps and they look gorgeous. Black and White and fast all over.

We had to go test them out so Jen, PIC and I went out on the Queen K for some time and felt the smooth ride of the new wheels. Now it really feest like race week .

After the ride we took care of some errands, had a nice dinner with teammates Grant and Kendra and are ready to hit the hay. I thought today would be a mellow day, but it was packed and I'm ready to go to bed. Things start to really get serious tomorrow. It's game time all the way. No more swimming with the turtles, no more running naked down Ali'i, it's time to focus!