Huli and Murphy's Law

The season has officially started, and at that with a bang! But let me recount this past Saturday one step at the time.

After a very busy work week, with lots of projects and unusual and unanticipated issues to deal with, which derailed any sense of normalcy, I expected Saturday to become quite a full day.

I felt quite tired all week, which was substantiated by a consistently higher-than-normal heart rate during training. Like many others, I am wearing a GPS enabled heart rate monitor whenever I paddle, run, ride the indoor bike or do any other aerobic activity, which allows me after the workout to connect to my computer and see great details about the workout, including a map of where I went, distance, time, pace and heart rate.

From experience I know that standing on the beach before the workout, my “resting” heart rate is normally around 65; this week, it was consistently at 80, 15 beats per minute higher. My highest heart rate the past few weeks in the canoe was around 175 (with my highest possible being around 188), but this week it was over 180, well above the range where lactic acid builds up in your muscles, which is the stuff that makes you ache the next day. I was a little bit concerned about that, but this can happen when you are tired or carry around a bit of a cold or something.

Saturday morning, I had to get up around 3:45am to get ready for the 2012 Visitors Industry Charity Walk, which took place at Waikoloa Beach Resort. As the chairman of the Hawai`i Island Lodging and Tourism Association, it was important that I was there, and as the General Manager of The Fairmont Orchid, I wanted to support our employees who not only came out in large numbers to run and walk the course, but also to staff the food booth for all the participants after the walk. I arrived at Waikoloa at 5:30am, signed a few checks from the association to the vendors, and signed up for the race. My plan was to race the running portion of the event, a 4-mile course, starting at 6:30am, then walk around for a while and show face as we say, before moving on to Kawaihae. The run start didn’t take place until 7am, which made things a bit tight time wise for me. I started at the front of the race, but after a mile I checked my pulse and saw that it was a bit higher than I wanted it to be (175 bpm), which again put me in the lactic acid range, not a good things if you have to paddle later on. I slowed down a bit and finish in about 29 minutes, a little over 7 minutes per mile – not all that good for such a short race, but sufficient for what it was.

After a bit of socializing, including Mufi Hannemann, former mayor of Honolulu, now the President and CEO of the state-wide hotel association, and this fall running for U.S. Congress, I had to get going and “fought” my way out of Waikoloa, with various roads closed off due to the charity walk.

Things didn’t get any better traffic-wise up at Kawaihae Harbor, as more than 70 crews (times 6 paddlers, resulting in over 400 paddlers, plus families) tried to park their vehicles. As I came up a bit late, I had to park outside Kawaihae, on the road towards Hawi, and walk/run down to the harbor.

Every Westside club was represented, and dozens of small tents dotted the area. I eventually found my crew; we paid the entry fee and got ready for race start. The Wahine crews (women) went out before us, so as they returned from their race, the Kane crews (men) were taking over the canoes. This exchange in these types of races is always chaotic, as the women want to go on land, but not the entire men’s crew is there yet. In our case, Scotty, one of my crew mates and I took over the canoe and paddled together away from the pier to make room for other canoes to come in. Eventually our entire crew was in the canoe and we went for a short warm-up before we lined up at the starting line. Johnny was our stroker, with Scotty in seat two, Dave in three, me in four, with Nick in five and Kawika steering us.

Starting lines are always crazy. Everyone wants to be in the perfect position when the green flag comes up, and every steersman is trying to inch a bit ahead of everyone else. We were on the far outside lane, thinking that we could get a clear shot out of the start without the danger of getting entangled with other canoes. The flag came up and off we went. We had a great start, pumping for four changes before settling in and ready to conquer the world (or at least the other canoes). All of a sudden, Kawika called a stop as we just had a false start as this start was only meant for a few canoes in the non-traditional category. Nothing you can do other than turn around, paddle back and line up once again. The second start was good and we started off well on the outside, slowly but surely moving landwards and towards the other canoes. There was wind and swells coming from the Northwest, which meant that the ama (outrigger) on the left side of the canoe constantly rose up out of the water, which obviously made the canoe quite tippy and unstable. We went well for 20 minutes or so, keeping up with the pack and settling into a nice rhythm, as much as that is possible with such choppy waters. The ama was up quite often, which required seats three and four the counteract often, and it also brought in a bit of water which I had to bail with a handmade bailer (a bailer in a Hawaiian canoe is a medium size plastic bottle, such as a detergent container, with the lid left on and the bottom cut out). When the water gets into the canoe, seat four, where the canoe is the deepest and most of the water collects, grabs the bailer and starts to shovel water out of the canoe.

Then, one inattentive moment, and we huli’ed. Huli is the Hawaiian word for flipping or turning, such as huli-huli chicken, which means rotisserie chicken (as it turns over and over). Huli in connection with food = good; huli in connection with a canoe = bad. The ama on the left side slowly but surely lifted up and over our heads, the canoe rolled over and we found ourselves in the water, with the canoe upside down on the water. When that happens, everyone knows what to do, but it still becomes a confused scene. Seats three and four dive under the canoe from right to left side, seat two and five lift the ama on the right side into the air and three and four grab the gunnel (wall) of the canoe and flip it back. That is the easy part. When the canoe is righted once again, it is full of water, which has to be bailed out before you can continue. Seat four (me) has to climb back in and start to bail, a process which can take several minutes and obviously is very tiring to ones bi- and triceps. While I was bailing, I heard the other canoes behind us come by and pass us, and by the time we were ready to paddle again, we were dead last.

A situation like this creates a big mental block as the competitive spirit is hampered and you know that you will not do well in the race. Normal reaction is that you just want to call it a day and go home, but pride makes you want to finish and overcome all odds, and so we did. We started out again and aimed at one canoe after the next in front of us, catching one after the other up to the turning point. The waves were quite strong against us, and at one point one hit the paddle of the stroker, who lost his paddle. It drifted past seat one, two, three and myself, but seat five was able to grab it and hand it back up, and so we continued. As I kept bailing water out of the canoe, my bailer lost its cap and I was now effectively bailing with a bailer with two open ends – not a guarantee for quick success. But despite Murphy’s Law, which as we know says that all that can go wrong will go wrong, we turned at the buoy, passed 16 canoes, made it back gracefully, and finished 18^th out of 34 canoes. It was a great training run and was my first competitive race since October 2008.

Unfortunately I could not stay around after the race for some food and socializing, and neither did I help the club to bring the canoes back to Kona after the race (a big no-no, and I will have to assist more than my share next Saturday at the regatta) as I had to go to work.

Later in the day as I arrived home, I decided to get one more chore out of the way and mow the lawn, 6,000 sq.ft. of St. Augustine Centipede grass which I mow once a week with a non-motorized, environmental friendly push reel mower – the ultimate healthy workout.

As my last act of the day, I attended a family dinner, so by the time I was done with that, I was ready for bed and a good night’s sleep.

A hui hou – next week is regatta week!

Chris