Hawaii
I’ve been in Hawaii for a bit now on a family vacation which means limited computer access.
It’s been pretty fun and all but the running is killing me. The hardest part is the second run of the day. It’s hellishly tough some days to get that second run in after already running in the morning then spending all day on your feet at the beach or going on hikes or other similar stuff. To compensate I’ve tried to switch more of my mileage to the morning (So most days have been 10mi in the morning and 6mi in the afternoon). The majority of the running is on roads, so that sucks, but the scenery is real nice. Most of my runs have been up and down the water front streets. Surprisingly there are a lot of recreational joggers running up and down the roads.
Other than that, it’s taken some time getting adapted to the 85 degree weather in december. I’ve had a pretty good week though. Should be around 100 miles for the week with one 6mi threshold, one 7mi threshold, one day of short hill sprints, and one of short variations in speed (30sec accelerations x10 during the run). I also got in a 15mi long run. So overall a very good week, but I’m pretty much spent.
The craziest thing about the trip is that I’ve run into several runners who knew me or I knew them. Earlier in the week i ran into a girl who ran for Valparaiso(Rachel something I think) and another guy (my bad, forgot) who ran in HS (sorry about names, I’m bad at that stuff… so my apologies) Even crazier was later in the week I ran into Daniel Gerber from the Woodlands and now at Georgetown. I actually saw him earlier in the week but since I wasn’t wearing my glasses/contacts I didn’t recognize him. I just thought it was some guy who looked like he was a good runner.
Anyways, having him there really helped as we got in a couple runs together and most importantly got in the 15 miler together, which would have been hell by myself. Pretty crazy to come so far to a beach on Kauii and have someone who went to HS 15min from you be staying at a beachouse 2mi from you. We got in a couple runs together and it definately made it easier to have someone running there with you. Plus it reassures you that you aren’t going like 9 min. mile pace on those days when you feel like crap.
Anyways, that’s about it as far as running goes. Can’t wait to get home and get some rest!
Happy New Years and on a sad note since I’m in Hawaii, that means no special New Years mile this year for me :(. Oh well, the boys carried the tradition on at home.
I’ll try and post some pics from the trip later. Pretty sweet scenery. I’ve done a couple hikes that were pretty cool. One was pretty sweet because we started off hiking the thing as a whole family and it went down a steep dirt road for a while. Then it wandered through the woods until you were on a cliff. Eventually it got to a small, pretty much worthless waterfall. That’s what was the big enticement of the hike and the waterfall didn’t live up to the hype. It ended up being further than we thought too, so only me and my brother went the whole way. Then we had to haul up the trail and drive down the crappy/steep road in a minivan to pick up the rest of the family at the bottom. Got to say that was pretty sweet driving down that thing with people giving us crazy looks and probably thinking wtf. After some careful maneuvering we even turned the thing around and made it out.
yeah we did some pretty sweet and tough hikes while we were there–we went on one 8 mile hike on the napali coast that took almost 6 hours, awesome views though. tough getting back to michigan.