Sunday, August 29, 2010

Duke's Festival: Hawaii Paddleboard Champs 2010


A tough Hawaii Kai to Waikiki Course yesterday!




Standups & traditional paddleboards battled small, short-interval bumps across Maunalua Bay and through Queen's surf break to finish at the Duke statue.

Always a great end to the summer, this year's race was also a lot of fun, even if conditions weren't optimal.

I set up a mini-race with Riggs Napoleon, joking that I would get to keep his new hat if I beat him... guess I should have kept my mouth shut and not talked so much stink when I passed him 1/2 way, cuz he came back to take me and cruised through an inside line around Diamond Head that put him a whopping 2 minutes ahead of me.... it was a defeat but also fun to race him. I am so in awe of the entire Napolean family and happy to see Nappy, Aaron, Sepa, Riggs, Joey all racing. 3 generations kicking butt and having fun!

Here are the full results:

Friday, August 20, 2010

Da Molokai Data

GARMIN GPS 

Check out our crazy North trek off the start! We were headed for the Big Island. The correction comes after my boat found me and said - where the heck are you going?!! After they gave me a direction I was able to pick a point on Oahu/clouds above Oahu and stayed pretty straight.


This was my first year to use a GPS on my board across the channel. I have the GARMIN Forerunner, 310XT. It is wonderful for training - you can see your speed, distance, time and split simultaneously. You can also set intervals for speed work, and it has a great default setting that tracks every mile.

Mile by mile, elapsed time, avg. pace, avg. speed, max speed. Note that I started the watch early & stopped after finishing so the overall time is over 9 minutes slow.
Although the larger, console style GARMINs have a map, mine is a small watch style that does not have a map (that's what your escort board is for!). But, my GPS does give great post-race analysis data.

Visual representation of speed by mile - you can see where I fell off my board knee paddling (early dip) and my water drops (shorter dips) as well as the slow, head-wind finish at the end. See my speed drop at mile 31 abruptly and then come up only after I got way inside Maunalua Bay - racing Kai Hall to the finish. I passed him and then he passed me back right at the end (he took 3rd place overall stock).