Australia-New Zealand 1

Australia- New Zealand 3

Oct. 16, 2025,

Hi Everyone,

I woke up this morning feeling great and knowing what a great day this would be. Boy what a surprise I was in for. I went to bed at 9:00 pm, still not being used to the time change. I woke up at 6:00 refreshed and ready to start the day. My friends Paul and Katerina went off to do a 2.5 hour hike up and down the local mountains here. I set my gps for the local police station to make a police report on my missing ipad. The GPS mal functioned for 1 hour until I ran out of battery life. I arrived at a small police station only to find it closed. I some how found my way back to my house an hour later by following the beach road until I recognized my street.

P and K arrived at the same time as me so we went off to a beach side restaurant for a light lunch. Paul and I then went over to the triathlon site to check in. They took one look at my bike and said that I could not race in a world championship using a road bike with straight handlebars. I had never heard of such a thing but apparently it is written somewhere in the handbook. Paul immediately went onto our web site for Canadian triathletes called Slack. He sent out a request for a bike hoping that someone would have raced in the olympic triathlon today and so would not need the bike for the sprint race tomorrow.

Within minutes a nice girl, Luisa, from Ottawa accepted to lend me her bike as she had finished her race and did not need it tomorrow. What a wonderful person and what a great sport. We met at the transition area and had the bike mechanic adjust the seat and change the pedals for me as I use a different type of racing pedals. I then registered the bike and left it in the transition area.

I will race tomorrow at 8:10 am in the 75 to 79 age group. I will meet my saviour later in the day and have invited both her and her husband out for dinner tomorrow evening.

This evening we got all our stuff ready for the race and put on our tattoos. You can only have your bike, running and bike shoes and a wet suit in the transition zone. They are very very strict here.

Love,

Brian