Sunday, June 13th is RACE DAY!! You are invited...

Aloha Friends and Family!
This Sunday, June 13, is the South Maui Triathlon! This is the race for which I have been training (and you have been encouraging/supporting/helping) me for the last 12 weeks. THANK YOU!

Many of you have asked about attending race day – I really appreciate your support and hope you can come out and cheer for all of the racers on Sunday – so I have put together some information that I hope will help. For more info you can also go directly to the website at http://www.southmauitriathlon.com/.

Parking for the event is at the special events parking area – just as you turn down from Piilani Highway into Wailea, you will make the first left – the parking area is immediately on the right. I do not know if shuttles will be available, so you’ll need to plan to walk down to the hotel or have someone drop you off at the hotel and come up to park.

The race begins at 6:00 a.m. with the men’s swim wave, with the women’s swim wave following at 6:05 a.m. The swim portion is at Wailea Beach in front of the Grand Wailea Hotel. Experienced triathletes and observers say that the swim is one of the most exciting legs to watch, because you can see it all happening in one place.

Swimmers then will run from the beach to the transition area near the Wailea Marriott (the host hotel) parking area, get on their bikes and head out. The transition area is also a fun place to watch because there is a lot of action and excitement going on. I do not know exactly where the transition area will be, but I suspect it will be in the parking area to the right of the parking structure at the hotel. You can see into this area from parts of the Wailea Shops parking lot. FYI - You will not be allowed in the transition area itself.

There are a couple of areas good for watching the bike leg of the race. One is at Mulligan’s on the Blue – the restaurant opens at 8:00 for breakfast (if you know Mike O’Dwyer then you might want to call him up and ask him to open at 7:30 on Sunday to accommodate the spectator crowd!), and the outside dining area has fairly good visibility to part of the bike course (the killer hill!). You can also go back up to the special events parking and grab a lawn chair – the bikers will pass both of these locations a total of four times (it’s a 2-loop course).

Then it’s back to the transition area to drop off the bikes for the run. The run course follows Makena Road, up to part of Makena Alanui, then back down Makena Road and past Makena Landing for the turnaround – I recommend somewhere around the turnaround – you can park at Makena Landing – but watch out for runners!!

The finish line is beachfront at the Wailea Marriott – near the luau grounds. My goal is to finish the race in under four hours, so I expect to cross the finish line sometime between 9:15 and 10:00 a.m. (if you want to sleep in!).

If you have any questions or need any more info, just let me know and I’ll try to get you an answer. This is all new for me too!

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!