Week 4 Update: Hawaiian Pork and Michigan Skinny

Craig and I drinking beer on a practice swim. The only sensible thing to do.

     So the past 10 days I was in Hawaii celebrating the Ironman World Championship return with my family and supporting friend for the Water Buffaloes, Craig Hoogerwerf, competing in the event, so the blog took a back seat. I figured the 2 people reading this wouldn't mind!

Operation Beer Belly Update:

Weight	Skav	Pat
Start: 9/5/22	244.8	212
Today: 10/12/22	241.2	199.8
2 Week Gain (Loss)	1.6	(1.5)
Total Gain (Loss)	(3.6)	(12.1)
Goal for Lake James 4/23/22	215	185
To Goal:	(26.2)	(14.8)

    Big milestone for Pat! Under the 200 mark already. He's definitely the Hare in our group. I gained 1.6 pounds on my Hawaiian vacation which was very good as usually I pick up a lot more weight on vacations. The heat and travel combined to keep my appetite in check along with some exercise and tremendous amounts of sweat. I'm pretty happy with where I am and the real work starts now! I'm going to need to add a percentage body weight column here to track apples to apples.

Ironman World Championships: Ho'ala Pactice Swim

Craig, Brad, and I pre-swim.

So while at the races to see Craig and others from Grand Rapids compete, I got to participate in the Practice Swim Race on Oct 2nd! Full Ironman distance of 2.4 miles in the ocean. What an incredible experience. I can only imagine what the full race must have been like, especially in the old mass start days! Craig and I both were just doing it to do it, but part of me wanted a little redemption for my swim at MiTi when I went 1:07 for the full distance in a wetsuit which was really slow for me (turns out I had Covid). 

Far Buoy of the Kailua Bay Swim Course from Kona Reef Condos/

The "race" officially had just under 800 finishers, but must have been well over 1000 with all the bandits out there. Craig and I typically swim at the front of these races, but this wasn't a typical field. Most of the swimmers besides myself are the best of the best in triathlon, so there was a full field as fast or faster than me. So we started back a bit and off to the left of the buoys (you swam with the buoys always to your right). Last thing Craig and I said was were were going to start easy. So naturally at the sound of the horn I was immediately thought to keep it easy, but that didn't last long. This was my first race in salt water and it was fast! Even with just a swim skin on, I felt like I was hauling. I just kept looking for feet to follow and to keep making my way to the buoy line. I could tell I was under an hour pace at the turn around (you can see in my picture below that my condo was just at the end of the swim with the buoy circled) which just meant that the swim back was going to suck as I tried to get it. 

Out was much easier than back. The crowd of swimmers broke up and it was just trying to find feet that were swimming toward the exit. It was much more difficult to sight in the practice race as the full buoys weren't out, but I made it to the end. I was just short of being under an hour at 1:00:57 officially with Craig coming in a minute after. I felt like I was going to vomit afterwards and couldn't understand what was happening. Fortunately Craig found me right away and told me to drink water as I probably swallowed too much salt! I didn't even know that was a thing! Crazy. Fun little swim and nice redemption from MiTi. 

Craig and I post race.

Get the Coffee in and Aloha!

Skav