Bevan is not well enough to race today, but he has given us a list of six competitors that he coaches, so we will have some purpose to our cheering. We tumbled out of bed at 6:30 and hurried down to the water to wait for the half iron man swimmers to start coming in.
We were in time to see the first woman head for transition.
Not everyone wore a wetsuit, but most did.
There were people of all shapes and sizes, but they had just swum 1.9km.
We moved out onto the pier and saw the IM starters still thrashing in the water.
All the swimmers took off their caps as soon as they got out of the water and they were not inked on the arms with a number, so we could not identify anyone we did not know until they got on their bikes. We went to the bike start and waved goodbye to Chris Huang. He gave us a big smile. It was starting to rain, so we went to Muffin Break for a delicious morning tea and back to the apartment. Dave and Angie Hartley arrived in Cairns this morning, so we met Dave and returned to the race, where we saw people finishing the 70.3 half Iron Man. We sat in the little stand and saw Shin Ishikawa finish. He is just past the arch in this picture.
As we walked out to the cape we saw a Jabiru in the water. We had not seen a wild one for several years.
We went to the Vanilla Cafe and ordered quiche for lunch. While waiting a man struck up a conversation with Dave and told us he was the helicopter pilot on the $200million Octopus yacht.
After lunch we found a spot in the shade which was sheltered from the rain and waited for the first runners to come by. Soon we saw the bicycle escort coming.
First male was Luke who at this stage had 10k to go and was several minutes ahead of the next runner.
Number 18 Kim Berkel. They were followed by Macca and the same order remained when they passed us on their final lap.
Later we saw the first and second women in a tussle with the third woman several minutes behind.
The runner traffic became quite heavy but we eventually saw Yuki Ishikawa three times and he responded with a smile when we called out Bevan's name. He was running too fast for our camera in the dark, but we got his number.
It was cold, wet and dark so we walked home and found out later that all six had finished, some quite late. Can you imagine 16 hours of continuous effort of the kind required to do an IM.
There were people of all shapes and sizes, but they had just swum 1.9km.
We moved out onto the pier and saw the IM starters still thrashing in the water.
All the swimmers took off their caps as soon as they got out of the water and they were not inked on the arms with a number, so we could not identify anyone we did not know until they got on their bikes. We went to the bike start and waved goodbye to Chris Huang. He gave us a big smile. It was starting to rain, so we went to Muffin Break for a delicious morning tea and back to the apartment. Dave and Angie Hartley arrived in Cairns this morning, so we met Dave and returned to the race, where we saw people finishing the 70.3 half Iron Man. We sat in the little stand and saw Shin Ishikawa finish. He is just past the arch in this picture.
As we walked out to the cape we saw a Jabiru in the water. We had not seen a wild one for several years.
We went to the Vanilla Cafe and ordered quiche for lunch. While waiting a man struck up a conversation with Dave and told us he was the helicopter pilot on the $200million Octopus yacht.
After lunch we found a spot in the shade which was sheltered from the rain and waited for the first runners to come by. Soon we saw the bicycle escort coming.
First male was Luke who at this stage had 10k to go and was several minutes ahead of the next runner.
Number 18 Kim Berkel. They were followed by Macca and the same order remained when they passed us on their final lap.
Later we saw the first and second women in a tussle with the third woman several minutes behind.
The runner traffic became quite heavy but we eventually saw Yuki Ishikawa three times and he responded with a smile when we called out Bevan's name. He was running too fast for our camera in the dark, but we got his number.
It was cold, wet and dark so we walked home and found out later that all six had finished, some quite late. Can you imagine 16 hours of continuous effort of the kind required to do an IM.
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