Day 8: The perfect recovery day

So, with perfect weather greeting me this morning, I headed out snorkeling with a friend Carla. We caught the trolley bus to the Black sands to get some quality R&R, but also enjoy some of the local sites.

After swimming around for about 30min, Carla swam into the vicinity of a Trigger fish, which happened to be nesting in the area. Not happy, imagine magpies swooping, well this was the equivalent under water. Was one of the funniest thing that I have ever seen. Her crap herself and the fish stalk her until we left the area. Wanted nothing to do with me just her..

Now one would thing that these are big fish, no, not at all...see pic below:

Now they can't really do much damage:

But it was so funny that when we laughed we actually forgot we were under water and then swallowed some sea water and coughed even more both from laughter and from drinking the water. In the meantime we were still trying to keep our eye on the fish.

There were so many beautiful fish out there and at one point we even saw a sea snake. Was freaky but interesting all the same.

Once we got out of the water, I did notice this sign:

It actually reads: Trigger fish are nesting & may bite, please be careful!!

From there lunch was had and the view was shocking, see below:

Following this I met up with Brett to do an open water swim. By the end of the 40min session I had actually felt like I had completed a double swim, snorkeling without flippers felt like a technique session as plenty of sculling was had.

We swam once again down at the swim start, with going out further than before, this was quite daunting especially when Brett turned and dropped a friendly, "Watch out for the sharks further out" after I suggested that I might keep swimming a bit further. This idea was quickly squashed and I turned to swim the 15 odd minutes back to the pier. (Funny funny!)

One thing that I must say is that the Americans love doing things in LARGE quantities, check this gatorade out.

$2.99 for a 1 litre bottle....try and carry that bad boy around!!

One thing that I must say that I am looking forward to Post Race courtesy of Peter Coulson are the coronas. I will even supply the ice Pete ;-).

Now back to the serious stuff. Tomorrow is the beginning of the end. The start of my final 2 week MASSIVE training block. 200k's in the saddle tomorrow and then the week just continues in the same fashion. To do this in these conditions, below is the nutrition that I will start with:

This JUST might get me over half way where I will need to refuel (hence the Hammer powder in the bag) to get me home. It is brutal out there I am not willing to make the ride go for any longer or be any harder than what it is going to be. Along with this, I will be carrying a whole lot of sunscreen.

Tomorrow's blog might not be as cheery as this one.

For now...

X-Man