Lake Taupo

The pronunciation of Taupo seems to be a moving target. Some say to-po, touh-po, taw-po ... call it what you will. My co-workers constantly wonder what planet i'm on when it comes to pronouncing english words, so maybe i'm just phonetically disfunctional.

Reminds me somewhat of Penticton, partly because it's host to one of these silly events called 'Ironman', but also because it's a small town on a large freshwater lake, with nearby mountains, and it serves as jumping point to a lot of outdoor activities.

I'll be back there in 10 weeks. Let's get this straight: so, I'm going to train 20+ hours per week swimming, biking, running for the next 2 months ... then cutoff most fruit/veggies, fibre, caffeine for a week ... wake up at 4:30 in the morning ... go and abuse myself for 10 or more hours on race course ... eating out of tiny packages of sugary goo ... all in the hope of joining 1500 other freaks like myself who want to do the same thing all over again ... but in the heat, humidity, wind of Hawaii ...

Sounds pretty good to me!

Parts of both the swim course and run course ... the cool thing about the swim course is that the water tastes like water from a spring water bottle ...


The start of the only 'real' climb on the bike course ...


The middle of the same climb ... a little geothermal activity happenin there on the left ... mmm, sulfur.


Near the top of that climb ... it is about 8km long ...


After the climb, the start of a nice long 20k of very slight descent ... meaning of course a minor ascent on the way back to town ... let's hope for a head wind going out, tail wind coming back ....


Heading back to town, you can see the lake in the distance ... the 8k descent is going to be fast ... like 60kph fast. Hopefully the roads will be dry.