While Kai `Opua as a club won the second Hawai`i Island regatta, the margin of victory over the second club (Keauhou) was not as large as the week prior. While no club ever wants to make excuses for their performance, sometimes explanations help shed some light on what is going on. In this case, quite a few paddlers had flu-like symptoms and fever and didn’t feel up to the task, but drove to Hilo anyway and paddled their race, albeit not in full strength.
As soon as I headed home after that race , I also started to feel a bit tired and worn, and it didn’t help that on Sunday night of the Memorial Day weekend, I attended the screening of the Family of the Wa`a movie at the Big Island Film Festival which lasted until midnight. I then spent most of Memorial Day at work getting organized, so by Tuesday I was in pretty rough shape, with a deep cough and hot head. I nevertheless went to practice on Tuesday night, only to get engulfed in quite a bit of drama and bad blood.
Let me explain: the Sunday edition of the West Hawai`i Today daily newspaper had a nice story about the regatta, applauding the various crews that did well in the race – all very factual and innocent. The online edition of the same article allowed for comments below the article, and someone, under an assumed name, wrote a somewhat derogatory comment about our club program. This didn’t sit well with some of our paddlers, and pretty quickly e-mails started to fly around, accusations started to surface, and people started to guess who did what, etc. By Tuesday night, tempers were flaring within Kai `Opua. For an outsider looking in, this might seem quite turbulent and chaotic, but after 12 years involved in paddling, I have learned to look past these things, not take anything that is said or done personally, and remind myself why I am paddling in the first place (for the enjoyment and balance of life). By Thursday, things had settled down and the world was once again a better place.
Exciting things were happening at The Fairmont Orchid this past weekend. For the past four years, our hotel has been the host hotel for one of the major half-ironman distance triathlons, called the Ironman 70.3 Hawai’i. The number 70.3 refers to the distance the athletes are covering during the race (1.2 mile swim; 56 mile bike ride; 13.1 mile run), which happens to be exactly half the distance that the full ironman covers. There are 70.3 races all over the world, with the top finishers in the professional and age-group fields qualifying for either the 70.3 World Championship, or if desired, the full ironman race taking place each October right here on Hawai`i Island.
The race begins with the swim portion at Hapuna Beach, a few miles north of us, followed by the bike transition in the parking lot, the riders then head south towards Mauna Lani Resort before they turn around and head north to Hawi, in the northernmost part of our island. From there, they come back and transition from the bicycle to the run on our hotel property, on the north side of the North Tower. Most of the run takes place on the golf course, before the athletes cross the finish line at Turtle Pointe at The Fairmont Orchid.
Many athletes bring their families and make a vacation out of this race (why wouldn’t they, this is paradise). By far the most prominent of them all was Lance Armstrong, 7-time Tour de France winning cyclist turned triathlete (which is what he started out as before he became the world’s most successful cyclist).
Lance is racing triathlons this year and actually won his first 70.3 a couple of weeks ago in Florida. His goal for the year is the qualification to race in the Ironman World Championship, and everyone knows that someone like Lance does not participate just for fun – winning is on the radar screen. Having Lance around property was great – he has great charisma and creates a great buzz, and everyone wanted to see if he could win this race as well (which is probably slightly more demanding than Florida, with a tough bicycle course and run on the grass of the golf course). On Friday afternoon, there was a mandatory athletes meeting, preceded by a pro-athlete panel, not only with Lance Armstrong, but also Chris Lieto (an outstanding professional triathlete making his part-time home in Kona) and Greg Bennett, an Australian Olympian in the discipline. The buzz was all around and we had to guide Lance through the back hallways of the hotel to the various destinations, always surrounded by Security, as people mob him wherever he goes.
From an athletic perspective, Armstrong is just incredible. He has recorded an aerobic capacity of 83.8 mL/kg/min (which is his body’s ability to absorb oxygen into the blood and therefore perform at a higher level for a longer period of time), more than double the average person’s (40–50). It is said that at his peak, he had a resting heart rate of 32–34 beats per minute, with a maximum heart rate of 201.
To make a long story short, Lance crushed the field and finished with a 23 minute 22 second swim, an unbelievable 2 hour 1 minute 46 second bike ride (under extremely difficult, windy conditions), and a 1 hour 22 minute 30 second run on a soft and rolling golf course. His finish time of 3 hours 50 minutes 55 seconds set a new course record.
But back to paddling. After a couple of good training sessions, Saturday’s line-up for the Men’s 50 race (“my” race) was published, and three of the original crew, including myself, were not on the roster. This was absolutely fair as we have the great luxury of having 14 very strong paddlers in the 50 year and over age group, and everyone should get the chance to paddle. If only the six strongest paddlers would race every weekend (and who decides who the strongest paddlers are, anyway?), the others would get discouraged and there wouldn’t be an incentive for them to be around all season and into the long-distance races. Anyway, I knew that I would not be racing “my” race this week, but coach Eddie had slated me into the mixed-40’s, which is a race for crews with 3 women and 3 men in the 40-49 year age group. Association rules state that it is possible to “trade down” in age group (meaning that older paddlers can race in younger categories), as was the case for me here. The crew who paddled this race last week came in 2nd by only 1 second, so the goal was to win this week and bring home the gold.
On Saturday, I went to The Fairmont Orchid early in the morning to be around the triathlon. I went to the swim start at Hapuna, then spent some time on the bike course, and then returned to property to be around the transition from bike to run, and the finish line. As mentioned above, the caliber of racers attracted many more spectators and you could definitely feel the buzz on race day. I stayed around to watch the first few professional racers finish, under spectacularly blue skies and 40 mph wind gusts. By 11:30am, I was on the road to Hilo to support and race with Kai `Opua. As I was driving over Saddle Road, the clouds became very thick and by the time I got to Hilo Bay, it was pouring,( which it had done all morning long, judging by the huge puddles of water and the churning water in the bay). The entire afternoon became an on-again, off-again rainy event, and at some point, our entire club tent was lifted up by a huge gust of wind and blown across the beach – luckily nobody got seriously hurt, only a few minor cuts.
The races themselves were quite difficult due to the wind, rain and wavy conditions, and lucky for us, “my” fifties crew won the race against Puna once again by over 3 seconds, and the mixed masters crew I raced with came in second behind Keauhou Canoe Club, a good showing for us. As a club, we dominated the regatta and won the event with a record 258 points.
It was 6pm by the time everything was cleaned up and I was able to leave Hilo, and didn’t get back to Kona until very late in the evening. It was a great day of outstanding athletic achievement on both sides of the island. It will be interesting to see what Lance Armstrong can do on June 24th in Nice, France, where he will race his first full-distance ironman. Here in West Hawai`i, it will be interesting to see what our coach will do for the 50’s crew for next Saturday – the regatta will be in Kona, on our home waters.
A hui hou.
Chris
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