Going for Kona (20 page)

After the sobfest of my interview, I had to spend the rest of the morning doing other press and signing books before I could escape back to my room. I wanted a nap, but I had a long way to go before I could rest, including the need to fuel and hydrate in preparation for the race, and to send Brian one last blog post before I went to sleep. If I slept at all.

The room was spartan except for La Mariposa the Second leaning against the wall outside the bathroom. Maybe that wasn’t fair. The space was spare, but it was tasteful. The white wicker furniture and pale yellow cushions were brand new. A pillowy white comforter covered a sturdy mattress. Maybe if Adrian were there I would have had more enthusiasm.

A few years ago at one of my first triathlons, Adrian gave me his take on pre-race hotel rooms. “Some coaches warn their athletes against sex the night before a race. The theory is that it saps your energy.”

“Oh, really?” I said. “What does my coach advise?”

“Your coach thinks that for every orgasm you have, you’ll shave a minute off your personal-best time.”

“Well, don’t just stand there.” I’d pulled my short silk nightdress up and over my head. “You’ve got a lot of work to do.”

I shut the door on the room and my memories with a click.

I ate a seafood salad lunch at Splasher’s Grill, which Adrian would have enjoyed, then walked back toward my hotel. My knee felt tight. Maybe the walk would warm it up before I had to go set up my transition area and run through a light workout on the course.

As I stepped outside, I noticed the sign on the coffee shop across the street. “Serving only the freshest homegrown Kona.” Another thing Adrian would have liked. And I heard a woman’s voice. “That’s her.”

I glanced across the street and saw multi-time world champion Ironman Mirinda Carfrae. Wow, I thought. She’s amazing. And almost as short as me.

A door bell jingled and a store I hadn’t noticed before caught my attention. A small sign swung from the awning: The Flying Flower. I stopped in the shade of the awning to look at the time on my Garmin and the woman’s voice caught up with me again. “She’s cute, but not gorgeous like he was. I read on People.com today that her publicist used to buy flowers and tell her they were from him.”

A second woman answered. “Poor thing. People say she looks like that Mexican actress, but I don’t see it . . . did I ever tell you about the shiteous movie I watched that she was in?
Señorita Justice.
Don’t waste your time.”

I swallowed. They weren’t talking about Mirinda. They were talking about me and Eva Longoria. I had to get away from their eyes. I pushed backwards against the door of The Flying Flower and it swung open. I stumbled in and pushed it closed. I stood stock still, straining to hear them, but in the sanctuary of the store I couldn’t make them out anymore. Good. The veil over my other senses lifted as I turned around to look at the shop. I inhaled vanilla and coconut. Cool air licked at my sleeveless arms and I shivered, but not from the cold.

The tiny space was filled with butterflies. Giant suspended gauze monarchs. Blue butterfly tea sets. Yellow butterfly aprons. Butterflies of every color and type danced through delicate paintings and vibrant photographs. I walked into their midst and turned slowly in a full circle.

“Let me know if I can help you,” I heard. The voice sounded creaky and aged and like it had come from the direction of the counter, but I didn’t see anyone. I searched the room for a silvery butterfly with blue-rimmed wings that matched the voice, then I caught myself. I shook my head. I couldn’t allow my imagination to start jacking with me. I only had to get through two more days, and then it wouldn’t matter what my crazy head told me anymore.

Gray waves popped up behind a counter. See, Michele, I thought. Human, not butterfly.

“Your shop is amazing.”

“Thank you.” The head rose farther into the air, revealing lapis lazuli eyes and impossibly white skin with so few wrinkles that the hair made no sense. But then neither did mine. “Ah, dearie, are you here to do the big race?”

“I am, but how did you know?”

“Because you look hungry.”

A laugh shot out of me from I don’t know where. “Yes, I guess so.”

“You like butterflies?”

“My husband did.”

She lowered her chin, looking up at me from the deep of her eyes. “My partner, Johnna, did, too. She was a lepidopterist. A scientist. I just think they’re pretty.”

I watched, fascinated, as golden strands of light made their way from her chest to the floor and over to me. They shone up my leg and my stomach until they reached my chest, then the slack went out and I felt a tiny tug and heard a pop. I stepped closer to her. As soon as I did, I saw what I was doing. Again. Stop it, Michele. Get out of your head. “She studied them here?”

“The monarchs here were her obsession.”

“I didn’t even know monarchs migrated this far.”

“The ones here now don’t migrate at all. They live and die here. They didn’t always live in the Hawaiian Islands, though. They came in the mid 1800s, when milkwood was introduced. Johnna believed that some of the monarchs on Kona descended from a strain of monarchs who had longer wings with narrow tips, which enabled them to fly farther than regular monarchs.” She looked fragile for a moment, her eyes cloudy. She fluffed her silver hair. “Not everyone agrees with her, but it’s a beautiful mystery, don’t you think?”

I couldn’t speak. I just nodded slowly as orange and black flying flowers filled the sky in my mind. They swooped and dipped, their formation fluid against the ocean below them. Their current eddied then swirled downward, and they landed on a tiny patch of green. When they settled, I found my words. “Wouldn’t the butterflies with the longer wings have moved on?”

“You mean why did they stay?”

“Yes,” I said, even though I suspected I had asked something else.

“Maybe Kona was just a better place than the one they left behind.”

“Yes.” My words slipped out in a whisper.

“I’m going to show you something special. Come with me.” She turned and opened a hidden door covered in monarch paper. The pattern lined up perfectly with the paper on the wall around it. I hurried after her. As I stepped through the door, I saw that it entered into a back room larger than the shop in front. Flowers were everywhere, and flashes of color flitted around.

“It’s my own butterfly farm. But that’s not really what I wanted to show you. Here.” She beckoned me with her long fingers. She pointed into the foliage. “See the white one?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“My monarch. Well, it’s not really mine. Johnna called them Kona Whites. I don’t know if that’s really their name. Johnna said the Kona Whites reminded her of me. She called me her white-winged butterfly.” The woman held her finger out, and the white butterfly lit upon it.

I palmed my locket. “My husband called me Butterfly, but he got it from my papa, who nicknamed me Itzpa, his little clawed butterfly, when I was very young.”

She turned her finger back and forth, admiring the winged beauty. “Ah, Itzpapalotl, warrior. You’re a fighter, then.”

I lowered the locket. I remembered the fights that had earned me the nickname, and my rage toward Rhonda and fight against Stephanie. “I used to be.”

She nodded, but her eyes never left the butterfly. “Well, if we learn nothing else from the butterflies, I guess it’s that the seasons change and things live and things die.” She walked back to the door to her shop, gesturing me before her. “Good luck in your race tomorrow, Little Itzpa.” She flicked her finger and the Kona White flew away before she opened the door.

That afternoon at my transition area I walked through my race prep checklist one last time before I called it a wrap. I had planned my race using everything Adrian ever taught me, and I knew that to finish the next day, I had to race my plan. Preparation is everything, and it would be too late to realize on the course that I needed a tire tube or some moleskin. Another pack of energy gel. Sunscreen. All of it was in place, though, and I’d shaken my jitters off on the course with a quick swim, bicycle, and jog.

I walked down Ali’i Drive, my mouth moving as I affirmed and visualized, another part of Adrian’s race prep. I watched myself swim in my mind’s eye. My body glided through the water until a fin rose from my back and a strong dolphin flipper replaced my feet. “I am the dolphin,” I whispered. “I am the dolphin.” Maybe my imagination was good for something. Before I moved mentally to the bicycle leg, I found myself standing in front of a blue clapboard church, right on the beach. The sunset aimed its full glory through an etched-glass window, and like the golden threads I’d conjured earlier, pulled on me. I walked into the back of the church. There was already a full house of athletes inside, and the sanctuary smelled like the inside of a yellow school bus.

At the front, a priest was speaking. I’d stumbled upon a Catholic church. Wouldn’t my abuela be happy, God rest her soul?

“Tomorrow,” he said, “even the strongest of you may need an angel. You will be putting your body and mind through an incredible test. Believe in your angel, and it will come to you when you need it most.”

I want to, Father, I thought. I want to believe so much. I knew how badly I needed help, and about all the things that would make Kona so difficult for me. An Ironman is an endurance test, and the conditions on Kona are unique and punishing. The water is too warm, even for me. I would have to bicycle through fifty-five-mile-per-hour crosswinds, and the forecast for the afternoon marathon, to be run on my bum knee, was ninety-two degrees.

Yes, I could use an angel, only mine was nowhere to be found.

When the service was over, I walked out of the church and down toward the starting line, where the Texas triathletes had organized a memorial for Adrian. Hundreds of people were gathered there. Hundreds. I fought back a crippling onslaught of emotion. Where was the practical and compartmentalized woman I used to be when I needed her?

“Michele?” I turned toward the male voice. It was James Harvey, an Austin triathlete Adrian had known for many more years than he had known me.

“Hi, James.”

“We’re ready to start the memorial. How about you?”

Never. “As I’ll ever be.”

James lifted a bullhorn to his mouth and his deep voice rumbled over the beach. I slipped away a safe distance from all the eyes that had shifted his way. “Thanks for coming, everyone. We are here to honor our friend and fellow triathlete, Adrian Hanson. You all knew Adrian. His words painted the picture of our sport. There’s his beautiful wife and co-author, Michele Lopez Hanson, now.”

James waved at me, and hundreds of heads turned. I saw cameras swing my way, including ESPN. Fine. It wasn’t race day yet, but apparently I hadn’t moved far enough away. I waved back, and I fought the urge to turn and not stop running until I was in my hotel room in bed.

“We could spend all night here if I passed the microphone around telling stories, but Adrian would not approve of us missing our beauty sleep.” The crowd tittered. “Volunteers are passing around lighters and Sharpies. Here’s what we want you to do. Take a Sharpie and write a message to Adrian, like his name, or ‘In memory of Adrian.’ Do it some place that won’t conflict with body-marking tomorrow, but make it show. Then pass it along to your neighbor. When we’re all done with the Sharpies, we’ll flick our Bics.”

The crowd hummed as people wrote on their arms and legs. I wrote “For Adrian” on the side of both my shins. The lump in my throat was so big it nearly choked me. I swallowed hard, and it came loose.

James spoke into the bullhorn again. “You guys, please spread the word to everybody that couldn’t be here tonight. I’d love to see Adrian plastered on every leg in Kona tomorrow, okay?”

The crowd cheered. A teeming mass of mostly-strangers engulfed me. The skyline shifted, and I realized I had vertigo. I wanted to hold onto the person next to me to steady myself. I wanted Adrian there, seeing me sway and catching me before I knew I needed him.

“Light ’em up, hold ’em high, and let’s observe one minute of silence while we remember our friend Adrian Hanson. Adrian, buddy, I was going to kick your ass tomorrow. I’ll have to do it when I see you on the other side.”

Hundreds of lighters snapped and lit around me. I held my glowing hand aloft. I faltered and swayed. I felt the eyes of the man standing next to me. He leaned toward me. “Michele?”

I dipped my head in answer.

The stranger reached down and grasped my hand. His touch was electric, and a tiny gasp escaped before I could hold it in. The vertigo grew worse and I struggled to stay upright. The woman next to me put her arm around my waist, taking some of my weight on her. I concentrated on the feeling of my feet against solid ground and my body like a tree, rooted but able to sway without falling. The vertigo started to recede, but the minute stretched on a very long time.

James spoke into his bullhorn again. “Amen.”

“Amen,” the crowd responded.

I released the hand of the man beside me, and the woman withdrew her arm from my waist as James wrapped up.

“Michele is here to race, keeping up the family tradition for her husband. Y’all encourage her out there tomorrow. Go get some rest, and I’ll see you here tomorrow bright and early.”

I turned to thank my angels, but they were gone.

I treaded blue water off of Kailua Pier early the next morning with over two thousand other racers, but more alone than ever. Now I only had to swim 2.4 miles, bicycle 112, and run 26.2. All in all, fourteen hours to go, and it’s over, I told myself. Fourteen was my target time, based on my training performance. Worst case would be just under seventeen at midnight, when they cut the race off. Either way, less than a day and it would be over.

Spectators and journalists lined the beach all the way up to the street. The entire span of water from the beach to the start was a bobbing rainbow mass of rubber-encased heads, all jostling for the perfect starting position. I jostled my way toward the back outside edge of the pack. Everyone would be after a personal-best time today. They were here to compete, and the swim could get rough. I moved farther to the side.

“Be the dolphin, Michele, be the dolphin,” I chanted, my teeth chattering with terror, but as fear engulfed me, the vision of the dolphin faded.

“Adrian? Adrian!”

My mind screamed out his name, looking for him in every face. I’d always counted on him to get me through that part. Even if he was twenty yards away, I could lock eyes with him, and it helped steady me. All I had of him now was his locket tucked into my tri-suit.

When the horn sounded and the mad start began, Adrian wasn’t there, but Kona was on. I dropped my head into the water and ordered my body into motion. My dolphin body, I told myself. My sleek, strong dolphin body. Fear still gripped me and my breath came in useless gasps.

Slow down, I told myself. Get into your rhythm. Reach kick pull kick reach kick pull kick.

Whack. Another swimmer kicked me in the face and my goggles came off my head. I stopped short and in the chop I sucked in a lungful of water. Arms slammed into me. More feet kicked me in the shoulders, in the chest. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t see. I had to find my goggles and move out of the way or this would be over before it had started, with me drowning before the first buoy.

A woman stopped. “Are you okay?”

“I lost my goggles.”

“I’ll help you.”

Her green eyes pulled me in, and some of my tension slipped away. “Do I know you?”

“Maybe.” She nodded twice, then disappeared under the water for three seconds. She popped up again in front me. “Here you go.” She handed me the orange goggles.

“Thank you.”

We both dropped our heads and swam again. I lost sight of her in seconds. I hadn’t even gotten her name, and she’d given up time and energy to help me, but I couldn’t dwell on it. I had to refocus, find my center, re-vision myself back into the race. I tried not to think of the immensity of the ocean around me, the crushing volume of that water, the things alive below me, my insignificance, but I couldn’t put the thoughts back in their boxes. Hundreds of us were bunched together and it was claustrophobic. After a few minutes or a few seconds—I wasn’t sure—I started huffing my breaths again. I was close to hyperventilating. I rolled over on my back and gasped for air.

Dolphins don’t panic, Michele. Dolphins love to swim in pods.

“Chinga la bunch of dolphins,” I shouted at the sky. It helped. I kicked my way to the outside of the thrashing horde, using my arms to steer, a dolphin on its back. When I was clear of the traffic, I rolled back over and swam freestyle. Better. Then, just as my heart rate and respiration slowed to a maintainable level, an arm karate-chopped my neck and the arm’s owner passed under me, shoving my body up out of the water.

Chinga la bunch of him, I thought. I kicked with strength I didn’t know I had and landed on his back. I punched him once, as hard as I could, in the kidneys. Then I sagged off him back into the water in a defensive posture, fists up like a lunatic. He didn’t even break stroke. I snorted and dropped back into the water. What, did he think he was going to win? Fat chance, buddy. I swam with my middle finger extended in his direction for a couple of strokes, and I felt better.

I was looser now, swimming better. Be the dolphin, Michele. I reached long, pulled hard, and exhaled completely. I kicked shallow and tight, saving my legs for the bike and run. What I lack in upper-body power I make up for in natural buoyancy through the tush, and Adrian taught me to use my curves to my advantage. Efficiency. It was all about efficiency. Now my rhythm came easily, and every few seconds the following sea gave me a gentle push.

“Look at me, Adrian,”
I said to him, wherever he was.
“You can hide $200,000 from me, but that doesn’t stop me from doing this. Doing this
without
you.”
Instead of sadness, exhilaration tingled through me.
“Doing this for
you
.”

I made my turn at the halfway point and headed back toward the start. On the ocean floor, scuba divers were looking up at us. One of them held a sign: “Adrian Hanson 1969–2014.” I stopped swimming and scissor-kicked myself above the water to sight down the shoreline, and I made a miraculous discovery—I wasn’t last. Not even close.

The swimmers were spread out far and wide now. The swim leg winners were probably nearly back to transition, but I was ahead of at least ten or fifteen percent of the pack. Even swimming against the current now, I felt strong and almost giddy.

You’re not just a dolphin, you’re a rock star, I told myself. A part of me knew my euphoria was just runner’s high, but I didn’t care. Endorphins were dancing inside me, and it was wonderful. Before the day was over, the chemistry would change and exhaustion would set in, but it wasn’t there yet, and I was the dolphin. I was going to be the damn dolphin all the way back, the whole way to the beach.

Mentally, I consulted my race plan: When the euphoria hits, back off. It’s a trick. No premature celebrating. Pace yourself. Be efficient. Finish smart. I refocused on rhythm and counted beats to get myself under control, to race my plan.

Reach kick pull kick reach kick pull kick. Reach long, pull hard, kick light, exhale full. I repeated my instructions over and over, not letting anything else into my brain, until my fingers hit sandy bottom beneath me.

I had done it.

I stood up and fell face first, laughing, and then tried again. I had just finished the Kona swim, in the world championships, even if I was only a lottery racer. Adrenaline rocketed through me as I exited the water and ran to the transition area to find my bicycle.

“Mom! Go, Mom!” There were probably four hundred mothers in that race, yet I tracked my boy’s voice. “Way to go, Mom!” the voice shouted again, and my eyes caught sight of him. Sam, my sixteen-year-old son, Sam, who was supposed to be back in Houston at his father’s house, who I had told not to come. He ran along the mesh fencing beside me and slapped me a high five. I was too confused to be angry, too moved to ask questions. “I love you, Mom!”

“I love you, too, Sam Jackson!”

“What about me?”

I looked behind Sam and saw Annabelle’s hair before I saw her face. Her wild curls blew in the wind, as big as she was. I couldn’t let myself cry. “I love you, Belle Hanson!” I held up my palm and she ducked in front of Sam to smack it.

Dios mío, protect my children while I race, because that’s what I’m here to do, I thought, and I ran for La Mariposa the Second. I had to keep my grip. Seconds saved here by skipping steps could mean disaster later on the course if I didn’t have the gear I needed. Preparation would keep me safe. First I rinsed seawater from my body and slathered on Hoo Ha Ride Glide without shame. Then I recited my list and touched each item in the bento bag on my top post, tucking the smaller ones into the pockets at the small of my back. Water bottles, Nuun tablets, Gus, Quest Bars, sunscreen. I put my precut moleskin patches on my ankles where my shoes rubbed. I opened my saddlebag and finished my list: extra tubes, one tire and CO2 cartridges. Check, all. I ran the hundred yards with my bicycle, ankles wobbling in my bike shoes, to the mounting zone.

Two wired teenagers had run ahead of me and screamed my name. I snapped the chinstrap to my helmet, shoved on my sunglasses, and swung my leg over.

“Go, Michele!”

“You can do it, Mom!”

I pumped my fist in the air. Despite my vow not to cry, the tears fell anyway. When would I finally be cried out? I had leaked more water from my eyes in the past three months than most people do in a lifetime. I wiped them away roughly. I had to be able to see the road. Concentrate, Michele. It’s time to fly. You’ll be on this bicycle for seven hours. Be the butterfly.

I clipped my right cleat in, but a thought stopped me cold. Adrian had told me it wasn’t over, and I’d held the kids away from me to keep them safe. Now, here, on Kona, they were on their own. I looked into the crowd. So many people. So many, many people.

I yelled in their direction. “Who brought you here?”

Annabelle beamed. “Nobody. We brought each other.”

What idiots raised these kids to be so dang self-reliant and independent? “Be careful, you guys. I’m serious.”

Sam laughed. “Don’t worry, Mom. We won’t talk to strangers.”

“Promise me, you guys. I can’t leave until you promise me.”

Two nods, looking at each other, then me. Annabelle acted as spokesperson. “We promise.”

That would have to do. I swallowed, and then reset my Garmin. My swim time, including transition onto the bike course, took less than seventy-eight minutes. That meant I swam the course in about seventy-six minutes, including having a panic attack and a fistfight. I’d never swum that distance in a pool faster than eighty.

If I could swim like that, then I could do the rest of this.

I looked back at the two people I loved most in the world one last time, tucked their images into my heart under my locket, and began to pedal.