Well it's just after 1.30pm here and I can't speak for the others but I have checked in my bike and transition bags. I've wrapped plastic bags around my hoods to protect the cabling from the predicted overnight rain and my helmet is also in a bag and tied to the bike.
The forecast is apparently now not as bad as was predicted yesterday, showers overnight and in the morning but drying off to be overcast in the afternoon. The wind will start off as a westerly and switch to a south westerly in the pm (headwind on the way home booo).
At the race briefing the guys were going on about how we had to wear the ponchos they hand out if the run gets cold and wet. I will remain as resilient as possible - last year I turned them down each time as they would have acted as a sail and made us slower!
Last night's dinner was good, we had a 30 minute Maori show (spine tingling as ever), quite a few back slaps for the organisers, interviews with Paula Newby-Fraser and Greg Welch (he is a crack-up) and then an inspiring video at the end. Almost had me in tears remembering last year's race.
We had a pirate table - Trogs, Anders and Jaggy and I all managed to find each other, and Andy S (sometime poster but usually on TT) also joined us.
Will post a race report some time on Sunday (NZ time).
Our race numbers for tracking are:
Ally Bally Bee 288
Troglodytes 1205
Anderssnog 1037
Jaggy 1110
Richard Melik is also here but racing as a Serpie, #900
The Baylisses are numbers 3 (Stephen) and 13 (Bella), though my money is on a Kiwi 123 in the men's race (Brown, Bozzone, Ussher) and for Gina Ferguson to take the women's title with Jo Lawn 2nd and Charlotte Paul 3rd.
