Pre-race with my teammates. All smiles because we did not know that Atomman (next to me) would be in emergency surgery that afternoon having pins placed in his hip.
Road race starts in the dark...
Does this look like fun? (Answer: hell no.)
So this is what I did instead... Always good to go help out at an aid station when you can! Maybe it'll be good karma for me next year. One of these years I really do want to win this race. I am not giving up on that goal.
So Monday was a little less stressful. We went down to the ocean and did a little pre-Roughwater swim. (Our desire to race was zero but fun nonetheless to go down and watch/support!) Nalani and Jennifer and I swam for like 45' and it was awesome. Well, the water was not very clear (out where we swam) but it was moooooving and that made it super fun. I have come to the conclusion that I actually genuinely prefer ocean swims in water that is not all calm and glassy. There was a decent current yesterday too and the Roughwater racers were going the wrong way into it (head current for them point to point swim!) One thing I find interesting about current is how it affects different swimmers... The strongest swimmers seem mostly unaffected by current- the winner yesterday was less than 1' off the course record set last year when there was more of a tail-current. But what you see as you go down the list though is that weaker swimmers are highly affected by current. Some people were 5-15' off what you'd expect them to do in an Ironman swim. Interesting too when you take a swim like IMNYC and see how tail current affects swimmers- the strongest swimmers were maybe 5-10' faster than what they would have otherwise done... but weaker swimmers were highly affected (positively) by the tail-current- some maybe 30-60' faster than they otherwise would have been? Note there were very few swim splits over an hour at that race... Leads me to conclude that current, either direction, affects strong swimmers WAY less than weaker swimmers. Weaker swimmers get screwed into a head current. And stronger swimmers get screwed (competitively) when there is a tail current. Anyway. Complete tangent there. Sorry!
So yes, it is September in Hawaii and I was wearing fleece. Brrrr.
After all the swimmers started racing, Moana got a surf lesson from her dad. She's a natural.
And now it's Tuesday. Back to work!
1 comment:
yea, that doesn't look fun at all, glad you bailed and didn't crash--- and good karma is always good to have your back pocket :)
Moana is SO stinking cute on that surfboard!!!!
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