good evening. what an awesome day! instead of being on a 9 hour flight to japan, i extended my stay at home. mito-chan totally talked me into the swim race yesterday and i’m glad i did it. it felt good to finish, and felt good to see so many active athletes…
i pulled up to waimea bay early this morning and looked at the conditions. it was perfect!! i was thinking it was going to be an easy race. so i boarded the shuttle bus and we all got dropped off near chun’s reef. 9 am the race started, i start swimming as fast as i can off the start because i wanted to jump ahead and slow down later. as i was swimming, my goggles fogged up again and when i was looking down at the reef, something was strange??? i was swimming my fastest but the reef wasn’t moving. i wasn’t going anywhere? i slowed down and started going backwards. huh??? oh my gosh!! CURRENT!!! the current was pretty strong and my arms were feeling like rubber as i was hardly moving. i changed my swimming style and started to swim like a dolphin. deep breath, go 3′ down, and swim like i’m free diving. it was working, i started to pass people that were swimming over me. they must have been tripping out.. haha…
the support for swimming competitions are amazing. ordinary people cheering for anybody that makes it to the finish line. today, over 500 competitors showed up and it such a big event. i finished up in 49.19 minutes, which was pretty good considering the current. i had 2 little 8 year old girls cheering me on at the finish line. after i drank a gallon of water, i asked the girls if they wanted to check out the dolphins i saw jumping outside the bay. they said “yes.” so i swam them outside the bay into the deep blue. i looked back and the people on the beach looked like ants. umm… maybe not too safe for kids to be out there. i hung on to them and as soon as we turned around, BAM!! there they were. 50-70 dolphins swimming near, under, and jumping over us. we had our goggles and the 2 girls were screaming their excited heads off. after swimming with them for 2 hours out there, i told them that the dolphin swim was twice as hard as the race. i was exhausted!! when we got back to the beach, the girls told me “that was the most amazing thing i’ve ever seen in my life. i will never forget this day!!!” i almost teared of joy…
on the way back to town, i stopped by my favorite saimin restaurant. i bet you don’t know where this is??? so local and so good!!! and that oily cheeseburger? hey, i deserved it!!
i was so stoked to see naoyuki honda there. this guy is a true athlete!!!
and mito-chan. she’s the reason why i was where i was today. mito-chan finished it in 54 minutes, which is awesome. i asked her to teach me how to swim properly. i was looking at people swimming by me today and they looked like the swimmers in the olympics. super powerful and graceful. how do i swim? imagine getting chased by a big shark. that’s how i swim. you can call it wild. i know if somebody taught me how to swim properly, i could cut my time down 10 minutes. thanks mito-chan…. but one thing, you will never ever catch me wearing those speedo tight shorts…. haha….
