jetlag keeping me up

More videos from New Zealand:

Driving in the Civic


Trying to Scare each other

Some videos from New Zealand
Waterall hike


Kayaking

NZ postman

NZ postman
Originally uploaded by john hayato

A picture for my dad.

Ironman New Zealand pictures

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One more week to go.

It's Monday, March 16 and I will be leaving Wellington at 3 am. Josh, Charlotte, and I will be off to the South Island via Picton. We will be checking out some wineries, beaches, hikes and what not before I fly back to Auckland the SF on Saturday. The wedding yesterday was beautiful and the weather was just plain amazing. Woke up early yesterday and had some alone time as I ventured to the Te Papa Museum before attending Perry and Anna's wedding. The museum is really cool as there is a lot of Maori/ New Zealand history in it and some interactive aspects to different pieces such as the Earthquake house. There's a Monet exhibit but I didn't bother going to it as I wanted to see the exhibits specific to the area. Will upload loads of video and pictures to my flickr, facebook... once I return to the states. Here is a video of a hike we did early last week when visiting Whiri's hometown.

Ironman New Zealand

Video of IM New Zealand. Thanks to Whiri's fam and friends for doing such a good job documenting it. Was fun pouring through it all to make a 5 min. video.

Bungy Jumping in New Zealand.

Morning of Getting pumped up

Ironman New Zealand Race summary

I will write more once I return to the states in 10 days but I don't have much time on the internet and the limited amount I do have is being used on work related things.

I finished in 11 hours and 24 minutes which is respectable and a great starting point from where to improve. I'm quite slow on the swim and this race was no different although from all the practice I've had, I finished the swim feeling fresh and ready for the long bike and run. It took me 1 hour 17 minutes to do the swim and it's partly because I started far off to the left where there weren't many swimmers but it meant that the length of the swim was longer. The bike was fairly uneventful for the first 40 km until I was stung by a bee on the left side of my face. During the next hour I stopped twice, once to massage some feeling into my face and then again to have it looked at as I'm allergic to bees. I was given ice to hold to my face while riding and decided not to stop and get any medication. The bike overall went quite well and I think I made up a lot of time due to my anger during most of the ride (b/c of the bee sting.) For the marathon, I achieved my goal of running the whole thing even though my shin splints started to bother me about 10 km into it. My overall splits were:
3.8 km swim = 1:17
180 km bike = 5:38
42 km run = 4:17

Last video before the race

Tomorrow is the big day and I'm going to sleep. :)

Trying to stay awake

So today is a day of rest and I'm trying my best to stay awake. It wasn't going to happen so I decided to use a power nap podcast (20 min. podcast that helps you get a good nap by different sounds and speaking). It definitely put me to sleep and I was out until it hit the 20 minute point. I was awoken by a loud rooster cock-a-doodle-doing! Well, on to the reason I'm writing a blog post. Woke up and Ellen was on TV. Well, the game that was about to be played was called The Ball Twister and it is hilarious. Check it out. We'll give it a go next time we meet. :)

IM New Zealand preparation

Getting my transition bags ready as I have to turn in my bike, bike bag, and run bag in the day before.

Team OkiJET
As many of you know, part of the reason I decided to do Ironman New Zealand was to reunite with friends I did races with in Japan. Last night was the first time the eight of us got together and we've made some sweet posters that will be put up along the run course. Josh and Charlotte also had shirts for us and they look really awesome! Tomorrow I will be racing at 7 AM so today I will be relaxing all day after attending a mandatory meeting this morning.

Ironman New Zealand - March 7, 2009
On Sat. March 7, 7 AM I will begin finish a journey that I've been working towards for the past year. By 11:59:59 PM at the Latest, I will hopefully be able to say that I'm an Ironman. If all goes according to plan, I will be saying it before the sun goes down. To keep track of what's going on during the race, check out Ironman.com as they will be live streaming it. For those of you in the states, the race will start on Friday, March 6 at 10 AM (PST) or 1 PM for my friends and family on the East Coast. Here's a little video I've put together during my time here thus far.