Thursday
Okay, so Thursday was rough. I spent most of the day making trips to the airport for family and friends and the rest prepping for another "gathering" at the Red Bull House. Everything went off without a hitch. The pro meeting was the biggest I've ever seen. It used to be 50 people in a room, and now it's 150 athletes and tons of media, agents, family and friends. Quite the spectacle. After taking 5 years to finally change the highly ridiculed 7m drafting rule, the new rule change that has everyone in uproar is the rediculous "wetsuit" rule that pretty much allows you to wear anything at the race start. The biggest problem, besides "affecting" the race is that these suits are so easy to assemble that athletes can actually have custom "one-off" suits made with thicker neoprene and get an even greater advantage. In an attempt to remedy this, the pro athletes have to write their names on the suits, and after the swim portion of the race the suits will be weighed and evaluated and anyone's suit that is deemed out of the accepted measurement range will lead to their disqualification. Hmmm. Tim is racing with an official Ironman sponsor suit - Blue Seventy, so hopefully Ironman's own endorsed products are legal.
Sorry, but we totally slacked on photos yesterday - it was too nuts and Mecca left the camera on and killed the power. I plan on totally redeeming myself today with lots of shots of Tim, his bike and the RB girls. I did get one shot of the RB girls as they played XBox Guitar Hero - addicting game - at the RB House. So, I'll post that at the bottom of this writeup.
One more night of Happy Hour at the House. Anyone on the island looking for a frosty beverage can head on over and we'll be sure to set you up. Come back later and we'll have more images.