Corey and I were lucky enough to take an amazing vacation to Hawaii this May to visit one of his friends who is currently stationed near Honolulu, Hawaii. When I heard we were going to Hawaii I knew I had to look for a race there...when else would I have the chance to run in Hawaii? I found a race that was only about 15 minutes from where we were staying that was a 10k one weekend early in May..so we planned our trip kind of around being able to run that race!
I convinced Corey to do it with me, and we told his friend we were staying with. He wasn't going to run eventually, but a few days before he said he would since a bunch of other soldiers in his company were also running! I was excited we would be running this, it was a 10k...and we get some awesome swag...everyone receives a shirt, a medal and a fresh pineapple at the end! I took a look at the results from previous years and saw it would be tough to place. A lot of people run this and the course has quite a few hills, additionally we would be a little jet lagged, and haven't been training in that kind of heat...lastly, my diet was drastically different here, so I know that can play a small part in running and endurance.
Our friend picked up the packets before we arrived, so the morning of we got up and headed out to the start. We had to drive part of the course to get there and we went down a big hill (I was instantly pretty excited), but then a huge hill came after! It was between 3 and 4 miles, so that was going to be tough being right in the middle of the race. I'm glad I knew about it though so I could try and pace myself knowing it was coming.
The start of the race was on a narrow street, and clearly people didn't care about having strollers and walkers near the back of the pack! The first mile or so was all weaving in and out of people and strollers, wore me out pretty early. I did catch up to Corey and was feeling good, so I passed him. Finally around mile 2 I had some room to run. I paced myself around 8:30 min miles to start because of the hill...well if you have read about my raced you know that I mean to pace, but never do...so I was running a little too fast, but made myself slow down.
When I got to the big downhill I knew what was coming and steadied myself to get up...I almost made it, but had to walk the top part unfortunately (so did a lot of other people it seemed). I had a hard time recovering after that since it was all flat and no downhills, but I continued along, having to stop and walk for 30 seconds or so every once in awhile...it was getting hot and I wasn't used to it. Luckily they had water stations almost every mile, so that helped. When we made a turn onto the main road where the school was I knew I was close so I sped up a bit and of course sprinted across the finish line and despite all the set backs I finished in around 55 min (and ahead of Corey). By chip time was actually 57ish, but my watch said 55, we also found out that the course was actually 6.5 miles...the company they used to place the cones, put some out at a wrong place so we ran a little bit extra. Overall, I was still pleased at my time!
The course was fine..ran through a town, on some outer roads, through fields and finished back at the school we began at. I was also amazed at all the stroller runners...I had misjudged them! Many ran right past me, with speed and not hurting at all, I was very impressed! I found out after that a lot of them were military spouses, and they had a group that would meet and run...so they were trained!
It was definitely an experience, and I'm so glad we got to run. Definitely a check off the bucket list, and the list of states to run in :)
Peace, Love and Running 🏃
#seejessrun #runtheyear2017 #runningwithoutlimits
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