Roka Maverick Pro Wetsuit First Dance

While on vacation in Kailua-Kona for our honeymoon and to watch the Ironman World Championship I met the men of Roka Sports.  Rob, Kurt and Michael were nice guys and we got to chatting about the 22km swim I'm planning for August 2014, being super generous (or maybe taking pity on me for looking like a slow swimmer) they donated a top-of-the-line Maverick Pro wetsuit.

I was hoping to take one last open-water dance before the snow fell, but I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba up in the Great White North, and by the time we got back home at the end of October the lake was only 4 degrees Celsius.  There's no wetsuit warm enough to get me swimming in that.

I finally put the wetsuit on today, here are my first thoughts (WARNING: I'm totally biased because the generosity of the Roka guys have created a loyal enthusiast).

Well styled. The legs and centre chest strip are thick to raise legs and make rotation easier.  Sides are a "middle thickness" and shoulders are very thin to allow for mobility.  The panels are seamed together and Roka has used the various thicknesses for function and the fashionable styling.

The arm and shoulder panels are quite thin so I was nervous to pull the arms on with much force.  Roka recommends pulling the suit up by grabbing the inside, or by grabbing the forearm panels (picture below) which also serve to help "feel" a proper catch.

Forearm panel

The fit is quite tight to make sure that the suit doesn't act as a parachute and "grab" extra water which weighs you down.  That said, I found that I had to pinch the bottom of the zipper to help get the zipper started.

Time for some arm circles to see just how flexible this suit actually is.  I was really impressed; the suit fit very snugly to the body but I had a lot of mobility in the shoulders.  The only point that I felt any shoulder tension was at the very back of an arm circle, but in the recovery phase of the stroke my arm really shouldn't be moving back that far anyway.  All in all, very stretchy and comfortable.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: By "comfortable" I mean: as comfortable as you can be while draped in rubber, having just got off an indoor bike trainer session and sweating profusely. 

The suit has some interesting features that should be noted:

This centre panel is the thickest of all and promotes proper body alignment.

Legs are slightly longer than a typical suit to promote extra buoyancy in the legs.

The line on the shoulder should be lined up with the boney part (super technical term) of the top of your shoulder.

I haven't counted but my guess is that "ROKA" is plastered on my body eleventy times!

This guy likes the fit of his Roka Maverick Pro Fullsuit!!!

Thanks guys!

How NOT Meeting Team Wurtele Paid Off

Last month the newly married Kim Babij-Gesell (my wife) and I went on our Honeymoon in Kailua-Kona to watch the Ironman World Championship.  Check out the blog post below or at the link here for the non-honeymoony video about our day watching the race.

After the race we toured around for a few days seeing the sights.  One morning I opened Twitter and saw a post from Canadian professional triathletes Trevor & Heather Wurtele saying the following

"Still hanging around Kona? We're giving away some @smithoptics gear Tuesday eve. But you gotta find Heather up Mauna Kea during sunset!!"

I'm a fan of the Wurteles. They did a super cool thing and sold all their worldly possessions to buy a camper van, quit their jobs, and tour the world as professional triathletes. These folks are gutsy!! I wanted to meet them and being a properly frugal Winnipeger free shades were the clincher. We rented a car and started the 13,000ft climb up the island.

Well, apparently 13,000ft is really high and pretty dangerous to get up to. So 9,200ft and -4 degrees Celsius later we got stopped by the park patrol.

Ever see that movie "The Road"? Well that's what Hawaii looks like at 9,200ft, SUPER CREEPY! Cold, tired and hungry we tucked our Canadian beaver tails between our legs and headed back down the island sans-Wurtele Meet and Greet.

We ended up tweeting back and forth with them about missing them up on Mauna Kea Mountain and they asked for our address, saying that they would mail out some Smith Optics Sunglasses to us at home. Well, three weeks later and CHA-CHING!!! Package in the mail with some sweet sunnies, booya! Check out all the shots of what they sent below.

Thanks so much for the package Team Wurtele! We're even bigger fans now and so proud to have you as Canadian representatives in the sport of Ironman.

Honeymoon in Kona Watching the Ironman World Championship

On September 7, 2013 my lovely lady Kim Babij and I got hitched.  She became Kim Babij-Gesell, and I locked in the best race sherpa around!  It was a great day, check out the picture below from Simply Rosie Photography.

The pictures were fantastic and despite putting up a stink about hiring a wedding photographer, I'm so glad we had Mark and Rosie there.  Originally, I thought hiring a wedding photographer was ridiculous and that Instagram would be fine enough.  Kim promptly corrected me and we made a trade; we would hire Simply Rosie and I would get to pick where we went on the honeymoon.  Hence: KONA IRONMAN!!!!

Enough mushy gushy stuff abut the wedding, on to the triathlon related part of the post. The video below is from the day of the race. Enjoy!