Kau WelaKau What-a?

Kau Wela
Kau What-a?

During my active years as a cellist in high school, when I was performing and competing fairly regularly, my teacher would use an interesting phrase to describe me: though I never won anything, or even got called back to the second round, I had become a "very seasoned performer."

I never really knew what that meant, or how I should have taken it, until after my "performance" last Saturday at the Kau Wela beginner's triathlon. It was a nice event - very small, both in distance and in crowd size, nice swag, pretty course, a good choice for a guy going out for his first open water swim.

Or so you would think.

After a brief session with my trainer on Thursday afternoon, I was feeling pretty confident on Saturday morning that I would be able to turn in a decent time or maybe, if all the cards fell in my favor, win my age group. I had slept very poorly the night before, however, due to a nagging cough that I've now been fighting for about a month, and to having to care for my poor sick little kids. At any rate, I got to the site early, got my transition set up in a way that I like, put on my rental wetsuit, and began to wander down toward the water, where I decided to dive in and put in a few strokes just to get the butterflies out and see how I could expect my wetsuit to feel, as it was my first time in one of those, as well.

I swam out, and my confidence rose considerably - boy, was I floating! This would be a cinch! The little buoy that we had to go out and around seemed so close I could nearly touch it from the shore.

About 50 yards out, I stopped and floated for a bit, looking back at the shore and feeling great - when I remembered what someone had told me about a wetsuit: that it's sometimes good to let in some water through the neck hole in order to keep you warm during the swim. So there, 50 yards from the shore, I reached up for my collar, pulled it open with both hands, and let in a flood of late spring glacier runoff into my suit which, until that moment, I had been perfectly warm in.

It felt like the Grim Reaper himself was wrapping his icy arms around my chest in the most unwelcoming of embraces. In a second, I turned from a confident, well-trained athlete into a shivering wreck, 50 yards from shore, whose ability to float was dwindling, right along side his ability to swim any distance longer than 25 meters. My wetsuit turned from the best flotation device ever invented into a vicious water predator that was determined to squeeze me to death and drag me to the miry bottom. In an instant I was shot. I couldn't get any air. I dog-paddled back in to the boat ramp, crawled back on land and instantly began to envision my impending doom - the most embarrassing water death in the shortest possible triathlon distance. I wasn't going to make it to the end of the dock, let alone around the buoy that now looked as though it may have well been on the other side of the lake. My cough started back up; I forgot to put on my watch to check my splits; it was all going down the drain. Before I knew it, the call of "ready, go!" came from the guy with the bull horn, and I surrendered myself to destruction.

I won't give you all the gory details, but let's just say that my 11-minute swim involved a surprising amount of passing other swimmers (which is much less fun than any other kind of passing in a triathlon, I've found), some back-stroking, a little help from a life-vest on a string (with a guy on a boat at the other end), and a LOT of heavy breathing.

If there's one lesson from the Kau Wela, it's this: put in some time in a wetsuit and in open water well before race day. If it's your first time for both, or either, you're in for a few surprises.

After the swim, I dragged myself to my transition and mentally tried to put myself together to at least have a good second leg. As is my custom, I shot out of T1 like a bullet from a gun, and instantly regained my confidence. By golly, the best swim time could only be a couple of minutes better than mine, maybe I could catch them on the bike.

But then fate caught me again, this time in the form of...wait for it...GEAR SLIPPAGE! On the first of two steep climbs, I stood up in the saddle and set my sights on the guy in the blue shirt just ahead of me, and just when I had flipped the setting to "kill," the all-too familiar grinding sound coming from my rear cassette sent chills down my spine. Sure enough, there were two loud pops and in a moment I was riding through clay. I shifted back down, and the bike popped back into my middle cog. In the end, it got bad enough that I ended the climb sittind down, holding my rear shifter down with my right hand, steering wobbily towards the crest of the hill with my left, and watching Blue Shirt slowly slide away.

I got to the top of the course, turned it around, and moved up to my large chain ring to try and make up some time. Sadly, Blue Shirt was gone by then, but it sure was a lot of fun coming down that course back toward the transition area. I started out watching my speedometer, but stopped after I saw a 4 in the 10's place and figured I'd be better served watching where I was going.

I screamed back into Transition, threw on my running shoes and headed back out for a quick run. Last leg was tiring, but uneventful. And I never did catch Blue Shirt, unfortunately.

All in all, I finished in 8th place (of 45 starters) overall, 3rd in my age group (out of 6). Looking just at my splits, I turned in the 4th fastest time on the bike and the 3rd fastest time on the run. Not bad, but certainly not what I feel I was capable of doing. The moral of the story: I've been near religious about my training, and my pace in all three disciplines has been going steadily down for some weeks. However, pace and strength do not equal experience - you could be the fastest you've ever been, but if you're not ready for the squeeze of a wetsuit on your lungs or for the challenges of the open water, or if you didn't check your equipment the night before for any technical issues, you're really loading the deck against yourself.

The most surprising thing that I took from Kau Wela is: I was probably a more solid cellist in high school than I thought I was at the time, and in labeling me as "seasoned," my teacher was trying to tell me so. There's nothing that can tie together the skills learned in practice like the seasoning of experience. This story may read like a failure, but I feel very positively about my race. Despite an abysmal swim time and an overall "I could have done better," I'm taking away more from the Kau Wela now in terms of seasoning and general know-how and experience than I could possibly have won in prizes had I turned in a personal best. I'm now looking for a way to do most of my swimming in open water. And I'm saving up for my own wetsuit, dang it.

Now, if only I could gain enough "seasoning" to avoid illness brought on by water-borne pathogens.

End Transmission.