The Suits Are Here!

Our local cycling community here was shocked to receive an email this afternoon stating that our biggest cycling race of the year, the 112 mile road race around the island, the one that was scheduled to happen in 4 days, was cancelled.

Lots of people, including me, are pretty bummed out about that.

I've been looking forward to this race all summer... I spent A LOT more time climbing hills on my road bike than riding flat and aero on my TT bike in preparation for this race... I was mentally and physically pretty geared up for a good one. So it's weird to just have it yanked out from underneath me.

I'm not one to dwell on the negative though, so I'm looking at the positives. Now I can do the Marathon Readiness Series 20K on Sunday instead. I won't be quite as thrashed for the 2.4 mile Waikiki Roughwater Swim on Monday. And I'll likely have a better race at Rev 3 Half IM at Cedar Point next Sunday if I don't give an all out effort for 112 miles the week before. But the 112 mile road race was the one I wanted.

Oh well. Focus on what we can control, right?

The explanation we were given (ok, we weren't given an explanation, emails just started flying) was that the police decided they didn't want to work on Sunday to close some intersections as the lead groups were coming through. Who knows what the real reason is?

Moving on to more positive topics... The suits arrived today!

I've been bugging the owner of Coffees of Hawaii all summer to get these suits made... he eventually agreed to let me do it so I got the artwork to Splish and ta-dah! We finally have them! Now my home has become a little mini distribution center trying to figure out who has paid and what size they want and packaging some to mail out while setting others aside to hand deliver... Moana was a big help in this effort. She got home from day care this afternoon and saw the box and said, "OOOOOOH! Bathing suits!!" She immediately wanted to help me start sorting them.

She handled them very carefully.

And she was meticulous about inspecting for quality control.

Anyway, I don't have any extra suits at this point, but if you want one, stay tuned because we'll be placing another order to sell in Kona next month. So if you want one, let me know and I'll mark it down and be sure to save one from that order for you. :)

The first place I'll get to wear my suit is in Maui this weekend... I'm headed over there on Friday morning to swim the Maui Channel as part of a relay on Sunday! (9+ mile channel between Lanai and Maui.) My whole team is going to be outfitted in COH suits and we'll be flying a COH flag on our boat and of course I'm going to brew a bunch of great coffee for us to drink while we're hanging out on the boat between legs. I don't think my team is going to be super competitive... just out to do it for fun... which is right in line with my mindset about this 'race'. I'll be sure to post lots of good pictures on FB of us hanging out on the boat in our cool suits drinking great coffee and taking turns swimming in crystal clear warm water between Hawaiian Islands. It's a tough life.

This Channel swim is actually kind of a big deal. I've heard there will be some former Olympians there... This year there are 53 teams entered and 20 swimmers will do it solo. One of the solo swimmers is my athlete, Jennifer. She contacted me to coach her through this about 5 months ago so we've been working together since the spring. She's swimming this to celebrate her 50th birthday (she does NOT look 50!) and is swimming really well right now! She's done a lot of hard work (um, 6 x 1000's descend 1-6 was one of her staple workouts... along with several 3 hour ocean swims... yep). She is ready.

If you're bored at work and want a little Hawaiian swimming motivation, here's a 4 minute video someone posted on You Tube a couple years ago. Watching it got me excited anyway!