Oh look, 5 AM exists in Honolulu too. Crazy, I know. It wasn't that hard to wake up this time though because my body is still back home, where it is 10am, so I've actually been tossing and turning for a while.
Today Jeff and I are heading out on an excursion that we booked from home to help cross another life goal off the list - swimming with dolphins. We're taking a boat out with Ko'Olina Tours to snorkel with dolphins, sea turtles, fish, maybe seals, and....supposedly, it's whale migration season too!
So, although I'm feeling slightly tired, I'm really excited for today - there's a lot in store.
Saturday, December 12th, 12 noon, Honolulu Time:
Wow, watching the sunrise for the first time in Hawaii from Ko' Olina was pretty neat! All of a sudden, mountains started popping into view.
Since we had signed up online and got the 'sighting guarantee' package, both Jeff and I got a wetsuit to wear and one underwater disposable camera. Even though Jeff has his digital underwater camera, I figured this might be nice because I might not be able to poke him to take a picture every time I saw something cool.
The boat crew were really great - very chatty, and the Captain had a bit of a fishing addiction which gave him and Jeff something to talk about.
We finally pulled out of the bay just after sunrise, around 7am I think, and headed out to try and find Wild Spinner Dolphins. They warned us that we might have to travel for a bit before finding them, but before we even got out of the channel, Jeff poked me and pointed at one of the buoys. There was a HUGE pod of dolphins hanging out right at the edge of the channel.
We spent at least half an hour just pulling the boat alongside them and watching them jump out of the water and spin in the air for us. We'd hang out on the sides of the boats and watch them come right up, swim right under us, and generally check us out. The pod was at least 50 dolphins, including babies, and even the crew sounded pretty excited about our luck.
After watching the dolphins for a while, we started getting ready to be dropped in the water. We were given our masks, hosed down (so we wouldn't be cold getting in the water), and were lined up on the pontoons. We didn't get flippers this time because we had to lay absolutely still to get the dolphins to come as close as possible. The captain explained that since they're wild, if you start towards them, they will get freaked out and turn away from you. This made me a little anxious - my first chance to swim with dolphins and I had to rely on the 20 or so other people on the tour to not move.
On a side note, for anyone wondering why I haven't done a swim with dolphin experience before - I don't believe/agree with the programs with captive dolphins, especially in most southern countries. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that if I wanted to swim with dolphins, they had to be out, free, and enjoying their natural environment.
Anyway, we got 3 drops for the dolphins because they kept taking off to the other side of the channel so it was getting complicated to do a good drop. The first drop was amazing but so fast, I barely even saw them because they came from behind.
The second drop, the entire pod was no more than 10 feet away from me. In looking back at the pictures, Jeff didn't get to see them that close. It was inexplainable. During the second drop I put my head into the water so that my ears were submerged and I could hear the dolphins whistling and chatting and then suddenly, they were right there, spinning in front of me in the water.
The third drop was actually entirely uneventful, we waited, but they never really came back that time.
Our next location was a drop with the sea turtles - the water was so clear you could see them moving around on the bottom from on the boat. They looked so small from the top of the water where we were kicking around, but then they would look up and head to the surface for air. The few that floated on the surface with us were much larger than we had expected. This was one of Jeff's favourite parts - he is in love with sea turtles as much as I am with dolphins.
The final location was a large area for tropical fish. I was feeling really tired and cold at this point so opted to stay on the boat while Jeff jumped in. While enjoying the sun, the Captain asked me if I wanted to help him bring in a Needlenose. He was throwing fish food out to bring them in, which was neat because a lot of other fish were coming to check it out - including pufferfish! When he finally hooked the Needlenose, he handed me the rod, and boy, that fish took off out to sea. The line just kept zipping out further and further. Finally he stopped and I gently started reeling him in. I only moved him a few feet before he zipped out again, and snapped the line.
That's when I heard Jeff behind me. Apparently his fishing radar had gone off and he'd climbed back on the boat. The captain and I hooked another fish and as I was bringing that one in, Jeff asked if he could 'feel the power' of the fish. I (mistakenly) handed him the rod. Jeff never gave it back. He landed my fish. I will never forgive him.
About twenty minutes and we're back at the hotel, switching our bags and heading for the Marathon Expo to pick up our bib numbers and ChampionChips! How exciting!
Saturday, December 12th, 5:00pm Honolulu Time:
Thank goodness, we got to sit on the beach! Only for an hour though because we've got to get to our Pre-Race Pasta Dinner with Team Diabetes Canada.
This afternoon we walked the mile from our hotel to the Marathon Expo - what an overwhelming feeling already. Even just seeing all the people walking on the street with marathon bags brought to life how many people were actually participating in this race. That's like this morning as we were leaving town, we saw so many groups of people out for runs. I kept thinking - I must be doing this wrong. But I know, our trainer said that you should be resting the last few days before the race!
We walked into the Hawaii Convention Centre to find an entire wall lined with Bib pick up stations. Think about the size of a convention centre and then realize how many bibs that entails. About 30,000, incase you weren't sure. Then we went through a station to activate our chips - these are important, they go on your shoe and send a signal when you cross over mats at different checkpoints along the route. It helps to ensure that you didn't take any shortcuts and to tell your friends and family where you are on the route!
We wandered around the expo for a bit to see if there was anything of interest to us. There was a large section with memorabilia for the marathon, but a lot of it was race gear related, and I'm just not sure if I'm going to do any more racing after tomorrow. I bought myself a tshirt that says 'Run like a Wahine' instead. There were a lot of booths directed to the 65% of the participants from Japan, so we couldn't understand what any of that was. I think the only other 2 booths we stopped at were the booth for the Marathon DVD to record my audio clip to myself and a booth that was selling necklaces that said 26.2 miles. I told the girl if she had a metric one I would buy it. No such luck.
We also signed the graffiti wall to leave our mark on the Honolulu Marathon. We are officially a part of this now.
Saturday, December 12th, 9:45pm Honolulu Time:
We just got back from our pre-race Pasta Dinner with Team Diabetes Canada. Jeff and I sat with a table of participants from Ottawa-Hull, two of which were running the 10km (for the 5th or 6th time), and one who is considered one of the 'elite' runners on the team, as he finishes around the 3 1/2 hour mark. We also met Fred de Fina, the head honcho of Team D, and Jenn who organizes all of the marathons trip-wise. Jenn told us that if we could sort something out with the airline, we could add a day to the end of our stay since we missed the first day! That made us both pretty happy, although we're not getting too excited until we call Continental.
I didn't eat much at dinner, I was so tired I was getting spins - which, less than 12 hours before your first marathon is very anxiety-inducing. Not only the spins part, but also the not eating much part.
We listened to a few speeches - my favourite of which came from Fred, who pointed out to us that as of tomorrow, we will be part of 2% of the North American population who has ever attempted a marathon.
Nobody ever told me that was the percentage before.
Now I feel really special.
Except that we have to be up in like, 5 1/2 hours and we still have to lay out all our gear, pack our bags, put our chips on our shoes, and anything else we need to do for tomorrow. Let's face it, we won't remember it all at 3am.
Here's hoping it won't be hard to get to sleep!!
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