Aloha kakahiaka

What? You're not fluent in Hawaiian? Oh...well that basically means good morning. It's anywhere from 10:30 to 1:30 on the mainland, but still before 9:00 in the islands. As I write this, I'm sitting on the patio of our rented home looking across the water at Lanai. It's 70 some degrees and everything around me is lush and green. Yup, it doesn't suck.

The wife and I arrived here around 6:00 Friday evening which was 9:00 by our internal clocks. Needless to say, we were pretty fried by the time dinner was over. Three hours of jet lag and a full day of travel will do that.

Fortunately, that three hours gave me plenty of time to sleep and yesterday I was up for a roughly one hour run around the township of Kahului. It's not the most scenic part of the island and really is more of a port town than a resort--but it's a good place to crash when your flight gets in later and you just want to rest. Here's the run I did:



It was weird but very pleasant to be out running in nothing but shorts and a technical shirt. I forgot how nice it is to not have to bundle up for a run.

I probably pushed it a little harder than I should have, but it's pretty easy for me to go here at sea level. I felt sore for the rest of the day however :-(.

The rest of the day was spent making our way down to Lahaina on the south side of the island. Normally that's a short drive but we chose the scenic route around to the west. On a map, that looks like a two lane highway like you might find through a mountain canyon in Colorado. In reality, it's a much narrower and often much steeper road which was only one car wide in several places. It was also amazing as these pictures show:

Oh yeah....what made it all the better was that we did the drive in this:

Not bad, huh?

I have a strength workout planned for today which I may or may not get done and then it looks as though I may have to juggle my schedule a little bit. Rain is forecast for later in the week and while it will still be hitting highs in the low 80's, I'd rather ride in dry weather if at all possible. I'm going to call the bike shop later when they open and see about moving my rental up.

Lot's more to come from here in the Aloha state including, I hope, some videos involving both training and non-training subject matter.

In the meantime, enjoy your Sunday and mahalo  for reading!

Running

It's no secret that running is my least favorite aspect of triathlon. That's mostly because I've done so much of it over the years. I ran cross-country and track in high school. When I was in college, it was my main mode of exercise. In the years since running has been my way to get back in shape and until I discovered tri's, it was also the one place I had to compete.

When I started biking and swimming, I really enjoyed the new sports breaking up my routine. Nevertheless, running is the third sport and it has to be done. So today, even though I was tired I dragged my butt out onto the road and did a long 7 miler. It was a rough one, especially coming on the heels of yesterday's 40 mile ride.

I also committed today, to run the Rock & Roll Half Marathon in October. It will be the first one I've run in four years. It means I need to keep building the running miles--especially after finishing the TriRock Olympic in September.

Another factor in deciding to do a half marathon is to use it as a gauge in determining whether I want to/can do a half Ironman. Obviously doing a stand along 13.1 is not the same as doing the full thing, but if the half is too much, it's probably safe to say that swimming 1.2 miles and biking 56 before hand will be way too much.

In the meantime, I'm glad I'll be in the pool tomorrow where the bulk of the work is done by my arms (I'm not much of a kicker on the swim). Then it's the longest brick so far on Saturday. I'm also breaking one of my rules about running two days in a row. Monday morning I'm going to do the four mile July 4 race in Washington Park. It's really just a t-shirt race but hey, I like getting t-shirts. That will be followed Tuesday but race #2 in the Aquaman Series. Back to back, but more than 24 hours so I think I can manage.

For now, I really need to get some sleep.