#16days until Pailolo
(Posting from Sept 1, 2016… and leaving unfinished, cuz #busy.)
There are plenty people who go harder, have more skill, are much better/faster than I am. This has been a year of building, as I’m hoping to use what I’ve learned this year to get even better, faster, smoother in the next season.
But before then, my first big race in Hawai’i waters. The Pailolo Challenge. Twenty-six miles crossing the channel between Maui and Moloka’i. Ten paddlers, water changes, bigger water than I’ve probably ever paddled.
Yes, I’m scared outta my mind.
The season is winding down, our local races are done, Catalina is in a little over a week (not going this year, reasons). And it’s been a bit of an arduous climb to get to this point.
Generally speaking, I’m not an athlete. Before college, I did sports badly, and only because I thought I needed it for my college applications (be well-rounded, they said). In college, sports were mainly about camaraderie. Well that and drinking. (Though, to be honest, both could describe all of college and adult life for me…)
Somehow, I’ve managed to carve out a life that requires a surprising level of physical exertion for a nerd such as myself. And despite getting older and its resulting entropic processes (i.e. stuff falls apart), I’ve consistently improved my overall fitness over the last decade or so. It’s interesting to be in the best shape of my life, just as many major functions are starting to show signs of wear and tear (moment of silence for the connective tissue of my youth…).
So I’ve never really understood what it meant to sacrifice for a sport. I mean, I thought I did. I’m tough, I know about persistence, and I have a reasonably good work ethic.
And even the stringent requirements of my belt tests, the months of training, the hours of study, the learning how to learn, and then unlearning the chaff. Even that wasn’t the same as this year has been. I thought I knew about laundry, focus, showing up. And I did. But my god, the laundry when you’re paddling 4–5 days a week. My house is draped in gear in varying stages of stinkiness 24/7.
The interesting thing, the thing I didn’t expect, was the solo-ness of this particular team sport. This is a group where I stand out like a sore thumb (I was on my way to an old lady race, and was mistaken for a young boy…kinda awesome, really), I certainly don’t fit in with the majority of my teammates (white, cis-female, mostly straight).
It was hard to realize, and to persist in spite of this, that I was working somewhat in isolation. Many of my non-paddling friends just …
(EDIT: not sure what I was about to say, but gonna let it mostly trail off here for now. I will say that Pailolo ended up being one of my fave races of all time and I’ve made a lotta peace with othering/belonging on and off the water since I started this post…mebbe I’ll come back to that in a diff post.)
