While in Busselton, Australia, about 200 km south of Perth, I wondered if I was “on the opposite” side of the world.  Thinking about it, I thought it was probably pretty close.

There is a great circle mapper at the following web page, which shows RDU – PER to be about 11,554 miles, which is pretty close to half way around the world.  (Officially, the circumference is 24,901 at the equator and 24,959 at the poles.)

http://gc.kls2.com/

And an even better visualization of this is the following “antipodal” map.  And that shows, as far as land mass, that NC is as close to opposite of south-western australia as you can get!

In a few hours Ironman Western Australia will be underway, and in this post I hope to be able to keep everyone up to date as much as possible. I will be using Dad’s iPhone to get text updates into this post, and I hope to use wifi to get some photo’s in as well. Keep this page open in your browser and refresh it every now and again to see the latest info I have….

4:35 just dropped dad off in the TA. He was up at 2:30 and I got up an hour later.

5:38 Dad has his “wettie” on and we are heading down to the swim start.

5:53 Dad is in the water warming up. Beautiful sunrise. A bit chilly but it will warm up!

6:00 The pros are off!

6:19 1000+ swimmers in a mass start is something to behold.

6:27 I’m walking along the jetty trying to find Dad but there are so many swimmers I am having trouble.

6:37 I think I found him. I hope to post some pictures when be goes out on the 1st bike leg.

6:55 The jetty is closed a couple hundred meters from the turn so I can’t see him for now, but it looks like he will hit the 1/2 way point about 42 – 43 minutes or so.

6:58 FYI there will be a lot fewer posts later when I won’t see him that often!!

7:37 Still going strong, very methodical. Nearing the final turn on the swim and then maybe 300 meters in.

7:57 Hmmm… I lost him in the water when I had to walk off the jetty while the swimmers cut over. 😦

8:07 Bummer, I missed him out of the water and out of the transition. Ironmanlive.com, #182, will have better updates than me for while.

8:34 McDonalds just on the edge of town has wireless, so I will post some pictures now.

8:56 Ok, heading back in to town now. I am bummed I missed him coming out of the water and the swim to bike transition!

9:37 I am standing at the 56 and 58 km mark where I should be able to see him twice within a minute or two. I hope I don’t miss him again.

9:53 He just went by, which means he is finishing the 1st 60km loop of the bike leg, and I won’t see him for a couple more hours. Time to get some brekky!

10:28 I am back at Samovar for brekky.

11:16 The pros just got off the bikes — about 10-12 racers all within 60 seconds of each other!!

12:53 I guess I missed Dad finishing lap 2 but he is out there now. I have been standing where I can watch both the pros on the run and the start of the bike loop.

14:07 Pro male (Berkel) just finished in 8:07 of so. 24 years old, 1st Ironman win. Shortis caught and passed him in the beginning of the 3rd lap, but Berkel would not let it stand.

14:09 Dad should be finishing the bike in the next little bit.

14:10 Shortis just came in. 38 years old. 44th ironman!!

14:56 Dad just came in off the bike. Asked for a coke.

15:21 After the transition and a little coke, he is off on the run.

15:25 McDonalds is about a 20 minute walk one way, and I only have about 5 or 6 pictures, so I will wait to post those.

15:26 The wind is picking up, and the flies are terrible. 😦

15:35 I’ve stepped into “The Goose” for tapas and a James Squire amber ale, my new favorite Australian brew. Here is the view:

The iPhone does not take the greatest pictures so I will use the real camera and post it later.

16:03 Sitting here watching all these great athletes run by really makes me want to get in shape!

17:11 Dad just passed by me, and I am still at The Goose. This is probably the 11km mark or so. I think he is about 1:50 into the run with 33km to go. He was running and looking fine, though he did not hear me yell “go Dad!”  I thing “Butler” works better. 🙂

17:29 Hah! I sat here at The Goose for over 2 hours and when I went to use the rest room there was a big sign saying they have free Internet… So let me upload some more photos. These 1st two are at the end of the 1st bike leg.

Ok, no wonder Internet is free here. 1000 ms back to the states! 😦

Here he is coming off the bike and starting the run:

And this is him running by The Goose around the 11km mark:

17:43 Ok, that is all the pictures for now. Dad is on the 16 or 17k mark of the run. I won’t see him again for another hour, I would guess.

19:42 Dad just passed me, he is about 2 km from finishing the 2nd of 3 loops. He again is asking for a coke as he is having trouble eating and drinking, and is afraid to run until he gets something with fizz. I will try to get something before he returns, I’m 2 km.

20:08 on the last 14km run leg, I was able to get a coke and ice…

20:30 walking the last bit in with dad.

20:34 Oops, Marshall just said I could not walk with Dad too long. So he is on his own for a bit… He is feeling better with the coke, but is not ready to run.

20:57 I just ran back to the finish area. Apparently “walking with” is considered outside assistance here, so I stopped as soon as a Marshall asked if I would be walking with Dad for long. He has about 10km to go I would guess.

22:18 2km to go!

22:25 His stomach has not felt good during the run so he has been walking it in. Just a few more minutes.

22:38 just ran thru!

22:49 All done. We are going to pack up and call it a day. I’ll write more tomorrow. Finish time was somewher around 16:23 I think.

Dec 8 Follow-up…

We got home and showered and went right to bed, and this morning we got up and went right to breakfast, since Dad had not eaten anything last night.  Official finish time according to ironman.com was 16:23:00.  I did run across the finish line with Dad — he wanted me to — though it did feel a little funny since I had not raced at all.

I woke up with terribly painful heels for some reason.  Maybe a combination of the long hike in keens in thick sugar sand and on the beach a few days ago, all the walking and running yesterday, etc.  I took some ibuprofen, I’m wearing a pair of Dad’s compression socks, and they are doing better.  I hurt worse than Dad and he is the one who raced!

I really don’t have any more pictures to post than what I had last night, as it got dark and then I was walking with Dad whenever the marshal would allow!

We had fun but we are a both looking forward to getting home and seeing our loved ones.  We miss you all!

[ p.s. I cleaned up some of the typo’s I had yesterday while posting updates from the iphone…]

Today we had breakfast, again at Samovar as they have fantastic food, and then went to the pre-race briefing.  That lasted about 45 minutes to an hour.  After that we went back to the hotel so Dad could get all his gear ready and take it back to the bike check in and transition.  I decided to take out one of the hotel bikes for a ride again, and after that, I went in to town to walk around, but most of the stores were closed.

So I walked the famous Busselton Jetty, which is 2 km long, and at that length is the longest jetty in the southern hemisphere.  Here is an aerial image I found on-line, but I wish it was bigger so you could appreciate it more.

At the end of the jetty is an underwater observatory, but I did not do that as you need to do it as part of a tour…  Beyond the observatory the jetty is closed due to disrepair…  You can see a bunch of birds on it in the photos below.

The jetty also marks the swim course, which stars on the left of this photo, goes all the way out and around, and back in along the jetty almost to the end, before cutting over towards the swim exit.  You’ll see a bunch of buoys marking the course.

Here are some photos from the day, including a shot of the “athletes village” just after the meeting, a huge lizzard I saw while riding, and the rest of the jetty I took while walking it.  The jetty is open during the swim so I will be able to walk it and take pictures of the swim from there.

After my paddle, I decided to go on a hike.  I was right in the middle of the “Cape to Cape Track,” a 135 km trek along the coast.   I went north about an hour and then turned around, following the track along single track hiking tail, jeep trails, and the beach.   A lot of the trail was like sugar sand, so I was glad I wore my keens (and I had to cross the river to get started).  The coast line was fantastically beautiful!

Here I am just going to use this blog’s feature of a gallery to show the pictures.

Today Dad and I swam about 30 minutes on the course again.  Water was much calmer than a couple days ago!  After that, we went back to Samovar for breakfast — that is 3 days in row, but they have fantastic food.  🙂

Dad is pretty much in laid back mode now, so I decided to take the car down to Margaret River, a town about 40 km away.    From there it was another 15 km or so to Surfer’s Point and the mouth of the River itself.  Surfer’s Point was beautiful, and there were a lot of surfers out!  The Margaret Rive r comes out here, and what is interesting is that this whole beach used to be the mouth of the river, but due to all the wineries and damming, the river is much smaller than it once was.  In fact, the kayak lady told me that the river just “broke through” last night… Before the sand had built up and dammed the river.  The water builds up and breaks through.  In the winter it always runs freely, but in the summer, it will dam up and break a few times, and eventually dam up for the remainder of the summer!

I rented a canoe and paddled all the way to the end of the river and then back.  On the way back, I stopped at some cliffs and found a huge bee-hive:

That was the end… I could have portaged over this, but I could hear the cars on the bridge which marks the end of the part of the river that you can paddle in this area within 100 meters or so…

Here are some shot from the cliffs and beehive:

After I paddled from the cliffs back to the river mouth and turned in my boat and gear, I decided to go on a little hike… I’ll post shortly on that.

Today we follwed the other tri-travel athletes into town in our rental “bus” and did an open water swim of about 30 minutes.  Luke Bell, a top pro Australian athlete was there.  After the swim Dad and I found a good breakfast place in the town of Bussleton and then headed to the expo.  Only the two official exhibitors were set up — the rest will be ready Thursday.

When we got back to the hotel, I decided to hire (that is “rent” in US English) a bike…  They have single speed beach cruisers only, and it turned out to be a tough ride when riding into the strong wind off the water!  There is a 25-30k paved path along the beach that goes south of our resort, as well as north past the downtown section of Busstleton, so I rode all of that and took the following pictures:

Later we headed back into town and had dinner at Vasse.  I had a somewhat strange but good risotto with pumpkin, spinach, corn, peas, feta, and fennel.

I am in Western Australia to watch my Dad race the Ironman on Sunday, December 7th, which I hope to liveblog, but we’ll see what kind of connectivity I can get in the somewhat small town of Busselton.  It took nearly 40 hours of travel to get into Perth from Raleigh, most of that in the air!  We stayed in Perth just one night, and then drove down to Busselton (about 3 hours away) the following day.

From our hotel in Perth we walked down to the river front and had dinner at an excellent restaurant called Halo’s.  The concierge had told me it was “Australian fare” but it was much more “gourmet” than we expected.