{"id":369,"date":"2012-10-15T01:48:47","date_gmt":"2012-10-15T01:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sayjack.net\/?p=369"},"modified":"2014-09-16T23:06:07","modified_gmt":"2014-09-16T23:06:07","slug":"369","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sayjack.net\/?p=369","title":{"rendered":"Kona–The Swim"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Filing through the crowd at 5:30 AM to get to our saved seats on the sea wall. ZOMBIE ALERT! They are frequently seen among the triathlon crowds.<\/p><\/div>\n

Triathlons aren’t for late-sleepers. \u00a0Kona starts the pros at 6:30 AM, the age-groupers at 7 AM, which means racers have until midnight (17 hours) before the lights go out and they get a DNF behind their name.<\/p>\n

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The finish line @ 5:30 AM, 100 yds. from the swim start.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Dynamo racers all rose by 3:30 AM to eat, check gear one more time and get to the race start by 4:45 AM. \u00a0We spectators got to sleep in until 4:45 AM–unless you were Betty, Ernie, Kyle and Shanks, who got to the swim start by 4:30 AM to save preferred seating along the sea wall for the rest of us. \u00a0They defended the wall rampart brilliantly (and often) so that when we arrived at 5:30 AM, we could climb atop the wall and dangle our feet out above the water 8 feet below while looking over the bay.<\/p>\n

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View from the sea wall to the pier and swim start. The transition area and bike corral is on the pier, behind the lights.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The pros start into the water at 6 AM to warm up for their 6:30 AM swim start.<\/p><\/div>\n

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6:30 AM, waiting on the sea wall for the start. Dynamo supporters in their green T-shirts were easy to find.<\/p><\/div>\n

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A flotilla of boats and paddle boards monitor swimmers. The swim starts at a float line, enforced by a rotating line of paddle-boarders, about 150 yards from shore.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Age groupers enter the bay for warm-up, beginning at 6:35 AM.<\/p>\n

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A certain group of celebrity spectators, seated on the sea wall.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

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Swimmers warming up. The buoy start line is in the distance near the top of the photo.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The sun coming over the horizon as the flotilla hovers…<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Triathlons aren’t for late-sleepers. \u00a0Kona starts the pros at 6:30 AM, the age-groupers at 7 AM, which means racers have until midnight (17 hours) before the lights go out and they get a DNF behind their name. The Dynamo racers … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5],"tags":[48],"class_list":["post-369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fam-friend","tag-hawaii"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sayjack.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/IMG_0468.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s3QqGi-369","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}