This morning we headed down to the pier to get in a quick swim. I don’t usually swim everyday but something tells me to get in everyday to get a better feel for the water.
The beach was packed. Busy bodies everywhere on the beach, at the tents, in the water. On top of that two huge cruiseboats in the bay along with their tiny ferries jetting cruiser-goers into town.
Stepping on to the beach we see Missouri athlete Nicole Burdge. She warns us the water is rough today. No joke! Compared to the past two days, it was topsy turvy and wavy as heck. But I’ll tell you what – I loved it. Somewhere Jennifer Harrison’s mouth just dropped. I thought to myself about Jennifer and how much she loved swimming and I was set. Just relax, reach, roll, and use your hand to pull that hip out of the way. The one thing I realize is that ocean swimming is all about rhythm. Not power or speed – just rhythm. I put my head down, relaxed and let my body roll. I was actually passing people.
You see a lot of crazy things in the water. And I’m not talking aquatic life. Lots of nervous jittery people doing breaststroke, backstroke. People swimming right into me. One guy even swam over me. For crying out loud people, RELAX, put your head up every once in awhile, sight and save all your craziness for race day.
We made it out to the espresso boat and I thoroughly enjoyed every shaky minute of it. I didn’t even look for Chris’ feet today. The water was too churned up to see anything. Turned around, headed back and the waves were worse! At one point, I was up on a swell so high it was like I was looking down from a platform on to everyone else in the water. Cool! Found a quiet, people-free place to swim and reached and rolled my way back to shore.
Lots of hottie spotting today. Saw Michellie walking again – pink shirt. Chris said “wow she is tall”. Yes. Getting into the water, a beautiful muscular woman by the name of Jo Lawn emerged with her signature hair braids. Getting into the water was Kona veteran Karen Smyers.
Went to Lava Java afterwards for some coffee in the sun. On the way there, spotted Sam McGlone talking with Joanna Zeiger outside the expo. At the coffee shop, Normann was there with his 10 person posse. TJ Tollakson stopped and said hi. The always poised and beautiful Laura Sopheia was at Lava Java. She assured me that winds would be light and swells would be gone by race day – according to some forecast research her friend did. Ok, let’s cross our fingers on that one.
Laura also told me we could run into the Energy Lab. I wasn’t sure about that so I told Chris today is the day. We’re going for it. We’ll do a short ride on the Queen K then into the Energy Lab.
As for Chris, I am convinced he brought all of the worst of his clothes to Hawaii. It’s hilarious. Today he is wearing a Battlebots t-shirt (thanks to Leslie & Jeff Curley for bringing that back from a trade show for him). He wears it at least once a week but I didn’t think he would bring it to Hawaii. I told him he should go up to Normann and in a robotic voice say “I am the Battlebot” and I would follow up with “I am the Small Wonder.”
Walking back we ran into Tracy and Shawn from Trisports.com. They were heading back to their condo to get away from the craziness. Ditto on that – Alii Drive is fun but it can be draining and such a mind game. It’s good to get away from the energy and just save our energy for race day.
