Xterra world champs 2012- big fat DNS!!

Mojito at Dukes on Ka'anapili

A bit late for posting the rest of my Hawaiian adventures......but better late than never, right?

Short version is that the day before the race, when finally the predicted north westerly swells arrived, I went for a practice swim in the big waves and somehow mistimed my return leg and got swallowed up, dragged under and spat out by the massive shorebreak.

Although I was probably only under the water for a few seconds, it felt like an eternity and I was pretty shaken and quite tearful. The best course of action would have been to get straight back in - back on the proverbial horse so to speak - but since I was alone and terrified, I decided to leave and put it aside until the next day ( race morning). The lifeguard had the red flags+ "Dangerous Shorebreak" sign out on the beach so I didn't feel like I was being tooooo much of a wuss......

Waves never previously seen around Chch.

More stress yet to come in the form of a tsumani warning for Hawaii that evening after an earthquake in the seabed off the coast of Vancouver. Luckily I was on the 4th floor of my Oceanside condo block however, after the experiences of living through an earthquake in Christchurch I was rather apprehensive. The hotel manager said anything above the 3rd floor was fine and not to panic; most of the guests seemed to be alarmed and were scurrying off in various directions to go elsewhere. I did move my rental car up the hill on the advice of the hotel staff and after reading the local civil defence website and skypeing with Brett and another friend I relaxed a little and came to the conclusion that it probably wasn't too much to worry about. Another added bonus of course could be that they would perhaps cancel the swim!!

Bike course-steep, sandy+hot

 

Anyway, I was one of the lucky ones after hearing of racers who ended up being out of their accommodation until 2am when the warning was rescinded. I ended up getting to sleep around midnight, crossing everything that the swim would be cancelled.
No sign of any rogue waves early next morning ensured that the local coastguard declared all the beaches on the west side of Maui safe for swimming. **************cue serious trepidation+anxiety*******

After a very casual registration + transition set up ( so nice not to be shivering while standing around in a trisuit!) I headed down to the beach and saw that the conditions were identical to the previous day, along with the red flags and the "Dangerous Shorebreak" warning. To cut (what could be) a long story short, I had a big panic attack and couldn't even dip a toe in the water. The race people were kind and lovely but nothing could get me in there and I wasn't allowed to continue sans transponder and do the bike and run so that was my day over. I spent the rest of the morning doing a bit of cheering and taking photographs then headed home to get changed and meet up with a couple of the other Chch people there who had raced and we all had an enjoyable evening at the awards dinner at the Ritz-Carlton Kapalua.  Definitely a different vibe from Ironman events I have attended; much more back to the fun, grass roots , pioneers of triathlon type atmosphere.

I am not one to dwell on decisions made in the moment as you can't change those- you can only learn from the experience and take action to ensure you won't either put yourself in that position again or find yourself in that situation again. We get choppy sea to swim in in the harbour over summer and when we used to swim at Scarborough you could some reasonable swells there but we don't get the big shorebreaks around Canterbury. But I could do a lot more to get comfortable in the surf and also learn how to read and understand what the waves and the water are doing.

Anyway, a couple of days post race Mum arrived and we had a fabulous holiday in Maui, ending with 2 days in Waikiki. We spent a lot of time on the beach, saw a few turtles and a manta ray, shopped, ate locally made ice cream, drank a mojito and ate fish tacos.

Banyan tree in Lahaina



Church in Makena