Honu Race Report (finally)

Its been almost a month since Honu so I figured it was my last chance to actually do a race report. I was waiting to post pictures but Blogger is having none of that so I'll edit them in when it decides to co-operate. I’ve had the chance to read some other race reports and mine will be longer than those since my race lasted an hour and a half longer. Yes, going fast is great but the true test of endurance is to just stay on the course as long as you can and still keep going.

The Swim

Mass start 1500 people, sounds awesome doesn’t it? My original plan was to hang back, let the fast, slot-focused people go and then just do my thing but then I realized how many people that left, about 1400. Normally the swim doesn’t phase me but after reading a local athlete’s blog about a training group coaching swimmers on how to shove others under the water and swim over them, I nervously realized there may be some athletes looking to purposely move me out of the way and not just accidentally swim over me. Finally I decided I’d rather take my chances with the strong swimmers and hope a gap opens when they all take off then to just get slammed around by the panicking weak swimmers.

I headed off to the deep water where the lifeguards were trying to keep people behind the start line without too much luck and waited for the cannon. BOOM! Away we went, the beginning of a very long day! A typical start, everyone on top of each other and I did have one locked in moment where I started to doubt my game plan but I very quickly realized it wasn’t going to be any better anywhere else and so far I hadn’t really been kicked, punched or slapped, I was doing well! I made it to the first buoy and was a little too far inside so I had to swim under the buoy (making sure I was going around the outside of the rope) which was a move I was a little concerned about feeling there may not be a window for me to surface once I cleared the buoy.

It was a tougher swim than I had anticipated but I’m not sure if it was due to the chop or the sheer number of swimmers. As we swam the buoy line a lifeguard, on a board keep yelling, “Move Left!” So I kept moving in left much to the annoyance of the guy to my left. I am a notorious zigzagger when I swim. I once won a lake swim at West Point only to have a guy on shore comment to me, “You know you’d be much faster if you swam in a straight line. I think you did twice the distance of everyone else.” So this poor guy had to contend with me crowding into him constantly but we got around all the buoys, at which point I realized perhaps the lifeguard wasn’t yelling at me personally and that my line was actually fine. Oh, well.

The day before the swim the family and I headed to the beach, along with every other athlete on the Kohala Coast to check out the swim course. I started chatting with this lady who managed to convince me that it was a triangular course and that the buoys were going to be brought in closer to shore. I realize now it was just wishful thinking on her part and even though I had read the official swim map and was fully briefed on the fact it was a rectangular course as soon as I rounded the last buoy on the top line I angled in for the finish. At this point two things occurred, the swimmer behind me started slapping the crap out of my feet and the crowd thinned out. The crowd thinning out often happens on the last stretch of swim races as those with juice left throw it into overdrive and those hitting the wall just start looking at the coral, so I wasn’t too concerned about it until I realized it wasn’t just thinning out it was barren. Damn it! I looked over my left shoulder and there is the swimming highway to the last buoy. So I turn completely around and head down to the last buoy. I’m not sure if my toe tapper was aware we were going the wrong way and just trying to redirect his mule or if I was just slowing down and he was catching up but after the 45 degree turn he disappeared, preferring to draft a swimmer actually doing the race course.

Finally land ho! I exited and was a little disappointed with my swim time of 37 minutes but I also knew I haven’t been putting the time into the pool and that there was so much left of today it would be better for me to play it safe on the swim in order to finish the bike.